milium 



I RELIGIOUS I 
! OPTIMISM I 



I R. P. SMITH ! 




Class 

Book 

Copyright ft .. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOStR 



Religious optimism 



RELIGIOUS 
OPTIMISM 



R. P. SMITH, A.M., D.D. 

Pastor, First Methodist Episcopal Church, 

Bozeman, Montana. 

1922 

Author, "Spiritual Value of Work." 

Former President of 
Kansas Wesleyan University 

Also of 
Montana Wesleyan University 




THE STRATFORD COMPANY 

Publishers 
Boston, Massachusetts 



^ 



s*?j 



6^ 3 



Copyright, 1922 

The STRATFORD CO., Publishers 

Boston, Mass. 



The Alpine Press, Boston, Mass., U. S. A. 



LC Control Number 




tmp96 027379 



"If you glance at history's pages, 

In all lands and eras known 
You will find the vanished ages 

Far more wicked than our own. 

As you scan each word and letter, 

You will realize it more, 
That the world today is better 

Than it ever was before." 

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox. 



To 

My Two Brothers in the Ministry 

the Eeverend Edward Smith, and 

the Eeverend Attree Smith. 



Contents 



Chapter 



Page 





Preface 




I 


A Common Fallacy 


. 1 


II 


Careless Criticisms 


. 9 


III 


The Good Old-Time Religion 


. 23 


IV 


Progress in General 


. 29 


V 


Progress in the United States 


. 35 


VI 


Men in the Church . 


. 43 


VII 


A Miracle in Book-Making . 


. 49 


VIII 


Open-Handed Religion . 


. 59 


IX 


A Fountain of Democracy 


. 67 


X 


A New Source of Religion 


. 77 


XI 


Stupendous Revivals 


. 89 


XII 


The Ongoings of History 


. 101 


XIII 


By-Products of the Church . 


. 113 


XIV 


Unorganized Religion . 


. 123 


XV 


Biblical Learning . 


. 135 


XVI 


Modern Theology . 


. 145 


XVII 


Other Tendencies . 


. 155 


XVIII 


Facing Facts . 


. 165 


XIX 


What of the Future? , 


, 177 



PREFACE 

ON different occasions during the past decade, 
before Ministerial Associations and elsewhere, 
the writer of this volume has been called upon to 
defend the optimistic view in regard to church atten- 
dance and the progress of the Christian religion. The 
following chapters furnish an opportunity to state 
his position more fully and definitely. No effort has 
been made to be exhaustive. The aim has been simply 
to give a general outline «of an argument that could, 
he thinks, be made much more complete and con- 
vincing. 

No one just now would care to speak a word which 
might have the effect of putting the church to sleep 
in an easy-going complacency. We must not present 
nor cherish a type of optimism that cuts the nerve 
of endeavor. This is the time for the church to 
become alert, and to put forth renewed energy to the 
achievement of greater tasks. But when facts war- 
rant it, one is justified in speaking a word designed 
to give the hope and inspiration that come, if not 
from assured victory, at least from the feeling that 
we are making substantial progress. 

The author is quite conscious of the short comings 
of the modern church- — her lack of spiritual power, 
her divided councils, her over-lapping in denomina- 
tional effort, her present day reactionary tendencies, 
her over emphasis of institutionalism, her need of 



PREFACE 

more intensive work ■ — a hundred complaints can be 
brought against the modern church. Neither is he 
unconscious of the magnitude of the task that still 
lies before the church. This task when seen in all 
its proportions and complexities is little less than 
staggering. That some two-thirds of the human race 
are illiterate and crying for light, and nearly the 
same number are unchristianized and in dire need 
of the Christ, and literally millions are suffering for 
the bare necessities of physical existence forbid that 
one should approach his work in over confidence. 

Neither is he unmindful of the blemishes of modern 
Christian civilization — of the prevalence of crime, 
of juvenile delinquency, of the disregard of the sanc- 
tity of the marriage vow, of the deep set greed and 
common practice of profiteering, of the "Hell's Half 
Acres" in the large cities of America and Europe, of 
the murderous class hatred that makes possible the 
unspeakable horrors of the Herrin massacre. He is 
more or less familiar with the verdict of modern 
biology and the intelligence tests of modern psychol- 
ogy as presented in such works as Mr. Stoddard's The 
Revolt Against Civilization. But dip almost any- 
where into the past and conditions can be found so 
dark that one hesitates to paint them and hence 
charitably refrains from making comparison with 
past history involving the darker aspects of human 
nature. There is, undeniably, enough bad in the 
world today. But the world is not going to the bad. 
It moves, and it is moving toward the Christian goal. 

Midst the troubled conditions of society in our 



PREFACE 

age, midst all the greed, wickedness, and ugly pas- 
sions of men, "Is the church retrograding or improv- 
ing, is the Christian religion advancing, standing still, 
or waning V 9 This is primarily the theme of this 
volume. The larger question "Is the world growing 
better V 9 is touched upon but this is not the main 
thesis. Freely admitting that the church is not what 
it can be and ought to be, it will be maintained here 
that this, up to date, is Christianity's best day and 
tomorrow promises to be far better. 

R. P. Smith. 



COMMON FALLACIES 



"There is majestic harmony and a sublime rhythm in the 
song of the centuries. Now, the "Miserere" wails through 
the vaulted chambers, and harsh discord rudely breaks the 
harmony, but only to brighten its charm, as heard through 
the distance of centuries. Again the "Hallelujah Chorus" 
is heard from pole to pole, and the paean of victory portends 
the final triumphant issue in the sweet harmony of peace." 

Julian Henry Myers. 

"The imperfections of the present must suggest and 
inspire the betterment of the future. To publish evils is 
not always to promise reform. Discontent becomes con- 
structive only when it is joined by hopefulness. — Restless- 
ness under inequitable conditions has always been a factor 
in Americanism. But it has been creative rather than 
pessimistic. When Americans lose this resilient confidence 
in the future, America will have grown senile." 

Shailer Mathew — 
The Validity of American Ideals. 



CHAPTER I 

Common Fallacies 

IT IS not intended in this volume to minimize the 
evils of this age, the imperfections of the modern 
church, nor the magnitude of the tasks that lie before 
the church. Conditions are bad enough and religious 
progress slow enough. It will, however, be argued 
that there are more solid reasons for hope, for intelli- 
gent optimism than in any other period in the history 
of the Christian religion. 

Few of us are historians. We lack the historic 
perspective, — that peculiar gift of the imagination 
that can make a vivid picture of the past. We are 
given to minify the faults of the past; indeed, this 
in itself is a ground for optimism; that, as a race, 
we are not only willing to have the faults of the past 
fade away, but we actually strive to bury them. On 
the other hand, we magnify the virtues of the past. 
This too is reason for hope, — showing that the race 
intuitively garners the good. One strong evidence 
indicating there is purpose in history is that evil 
is destroyed and the good preserved. History con- 
tains a principle, a force, a spirit "that makes for 
righteousness' ' and this spirit is never entirely in- 
active. It was never so apparent as today. 

But, turning to the present, our psychology is 
reversed. As we struggle with life's tasks, we mag- 



RELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

nify life's problems, hindrances, and evils with which 
we contend, and minify the good we enjoy. This 
common fallacy should be carefully kept in mind in 
comparing the past with the present. The present 
with all its evil is vividly before us, — open to our 
gaze. The past with chiefly the good is before us. 
Most of the bad has faded out of memory. 

There never was a time when people tumbled over 
each other to get to church, or jammed the door 
trying to get in, or, having gotten in, were em- 
barrassed for standing room. This may have been 
true in individual cases and for brief periods of 
time, but not generally and not for any considerable 
length of time. But this is true now spasmodically. 
"Witness the Billy Sunday and Gypsy Smith meet- 
ings; also the present movement in Scotland, and 
the mass movements toward Christianity in" the 
Orient. 

True, some folks remember crowded churches in 
their childhood, and when it seemed the custom in 
their neighborhood for everybody to go to church. 
But, were you to ask these people what per cent of 
the population of the country in general were church 
members and regularly attended church; or what 
was the seating capacity of churches at that time com- 
pared with the seating capacity of churches today; 
or should you ask them to compare the seatings of 
the churches with the population of that age, and the 
seatings of the churches with the population of this 
age, they would be at a loss to give any intelligent 
answers. The seating capacity of churches today, 



COMMON FALLACIES 

compared with the population, is by far the highest, 
in the history of the country. This fact also must 
be taken into careful consideration in comparing the 
present with the past, particularly by those who are 
given to magnifying the empty benches in modern 
churches. 

Statements in regard to people flocking to 
churches in an early day are just about as trust- 
worthy as the ordinary man ? s observation about the 
weather, or -one 's impressions of the old home after one 
has been away for forty years. I was reared on an 
eighty-acre farm. It was divided into ten-acre 
fields. As a lad, those fields seemed very large to 
me, — particularly when I was compelled to hoe a 
row of corn from one end to the other. My boyhood 
vision of those fields still remains. At a distance 
they still seem large, but when I return now to the 
old home and see those fields as they really are, they 
seem the merest garden patches as compared with the 
concept that lies in the back part of my brain about 
them, — a conception that I find impossible to correct 
except by returning to the scenes of my boyhood. 
It is this bit of intellectual readjustment we need in 
comparing churches and church attendance of the 
past with that of the present. 

People who once attended church and have 
dropped out of the habit, seem to think that others 
also have dropped out of the habit, or they uncon- 
sciously try to justify their own course by persuading 
themselves that people do not go to church now as 
they did in an earlier day. Such observations find 

[3] 



RELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

their way into our newspapers and magazines until 
a large part of our population have come to think that 
churches are comparatively poorly attended, have lost 
their influence, and that Christianity is waning. 

Not only must these common fallacies be guarded 
against, there is also the fallacy of the impatience of 
the reformer who thinks in terms of months and 
years. He is anxious to see the immediate results 
from his labors. His statements are often the mere 
expression of this anxiety. Great causes move in 
centuries and cycles. In their earlier periods espe- 
cially they seem to advance slowly or even to lose 
ground. They go forward by alternate periods of 
gain and loss. During the periods of loss it is quite 
easy to become discouraged or even to despair over 
their final outcome. 

So careful a writer as Charles A. Ellwood, whom 
we shall have occasion frequently to quote approv- 
ingly, says "We have come to the parting of the 
ways. Unless the world becomes speedily Christian, 
it is bound to become speedily pagan. We can not tol- 
erate pagan standards in business, in politics, in edu- 
cation, in art, literature and science without coming to 
repudiate the Christian ideal of life altogether.' ' 
The church is not tolerating these pagan tendencies. 
She is preserving her own soul by protesting against 
them. Whether such predictions are true or false 
may not be known for fifty or a hundred years, and 
by that time they will be forgotten. The probability 
is that this statement will prove false, for we do know 
that religious literature is dotted all over with 

[4] 



COMMON FALLACIES 

prophecies of this nature. Among so many, a limited 
number are sure to be correct, as was Abraham 
Lincoln's declaration that this nation can not long 
endure half free and half slave. As a matter of fact, 
in a progressive civilization, every day is a parting of 
the way. It is also true that causes after a period of 
gradual development often do culminate in unex- 
pected victory. The temperance reform suddenly 
resulting in national prohibition is an example. 
There is some wisdom in the words of Horace Mann, 
however, who after witnessing a measure to the sup- 
port of which he had given years of toil, defeated in 
the Massachusetts legislature, said: "The truth is I 
was in a hurry and God is not." 

In our moments of pessimism it is at times help- 
ful to remind ourselves how brief after all is the 
time the Christian religion has been at work in the 
world — how short a time, comparatively, it has had 
for the stupendous task of transforming the char- 
acter of men and establishing the kingdom of God on 
earth. Man has been on the earth 250,000 or even 
1,000,000 or more years. Compared with this dura- 
tion Christianity has been at work but a few hours. 
There are those who estimate the time man has lived 
on the earth as a period so vast, that comparatively, 
the historic period of man is but seven minutes. 1 

Allowance should furthermore be made for the 



1 C. E. W. Dodwell in Righteousness versus Religion says: "The 
sciences of Geology, Anthropology, Astro-Physics and others prove con- 
clusively that the earth has been habitable, and the abode of man, 
for an incalculable period of time; certainly several millions of years." 
Many conservative writers place the time at least a million years. For 
a brief discussion of the time man has lived on the earth see 
Conklin. "The Direction of Human Evolution." Chapter II. 



[5] 



RELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

pessimistic utterances during and immediately after 
the war. Edward Carpenter is typical of a class in 
accusing "Christian priests in the forms of its 
various sects, Greek or Catholic, Lutheran or 
Protestant, of having in these last days rushed forth 
to urge nations to slaughter each other with every 
diabolical device of science, and to glorify the war- 
cry of patriotism in defiance of the principle of uni- 
versal brotherhood." 1 There is a real inconsistency, 
of course, in Christian people warring against each 
other at all, but against such an outburst of paganism 
as occurred in the central powers in 1914, we should 
not have been worthy the name of Christian nations 
had we made no resistance. Future history will, no 
doubt, record with approval the fact that the major 
part of Christianity resisted and checked, even by 
war, such pagan tendencies. 

But it is the after-war symptoms, they tell us, that 
are most discouraging. History shows such tenden- 
cies after all great wars. These after-war pagan 
tendencies are not to be denied either in America or 
in Europe. Much of our during-war idealism has 
faded, but at the same time after-war utterances are 
likely to be unduly pessimistic. The world mind is 
weary. We are in a world psychology not unlike 
that of a minister on "Blue Monday." This is espe- 
cially true of English and European writers — those 
who were under the greatest strain and who now 
stand nearest the hardest problems of reconstruction. 



1 Pagan and Christian Creeds, p. 258. 

[6] 



COMMON FALLACIES 

Their utterances can hardly be regarded as normal, 
for they see through a glass darkly. 

Much criticism about the church springs from sur- 
face impressions. It is not based on fact, or on care- 
ful scientific investigation. These careless impres- 
sions should be removed from the popular mind 
and a more accurate picture of the progress and 
achievements and the ever widening and deepening 
influence of the Christian religion should be brought 
to public attention. Also the after-war criticism by 
able writers should be held in suspense at least until 
we are farther from the scenes of that awful tragedy. 
"We predict that criticism of the church and our 
modern social conditions in general will be far more 
hopeful in ten or twenty years, after our feeling and 
thinking has had time to become normal. 



[7] 



CARELESS CRITICISMS 



CARELESS CRITICISMS 



In 1711 Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, in London, 
began the publication of the Spectator, in every numbel 
presenting an editorial-like essay that laughed kindly at the 
follies and weaknesses of 1711. Curiously enough the follies 
and weaknesses are those of today. — Are those critics right 
who call the present times degenerate? Only the future 
can tell, but the lesson of the Spectator is that every 
period has its virtues and its follies, and that human nature 
in one time is the same that it was in another. A stronger 
and better civilization succeeded that one which Addison 
and Steele ridiculed. Social degeneration today may be 
only apparent. It may be that we see our faults so clearly 
that we are leading the way to an age that will be as 
superior to 1922 as 1922 is superior to 1711. 

The Independent and the Weekly Eeview 
April 1, 1922. 

"It is foolish to expect that religion and morality can 
escape the criticism which is being applied to all other insti- 
tutions. Their friends can best serve their interests not 
by seeking to shield them from criticism but by seeking to 
guide criticism into rational channels." 

Charles A. Ellwood. 



CHAPTER II 

Careless Criticisms 

THESE careless criticisms of the church today- 
are usually to the effect that it is losing mem- 
bers, that people no longer go to church as they used 
to, and that men, especially young men, have tabooed 
the church. It is pointed out that we have Christian 
activities but have lost Christian faith and exper- 
ience ; that the sanctions of religion have been greatlj 
weakened; and that indifference, infidelity, or out- 
broken crime are rampant in the land. Organized 
Christianity particularly is held to be a failure, a 
back number, or a spent force. Cynics are speaking 
not of the church militant; but of the "church im- 
potent here on earth." Much of this criticism goes 
unchallenged. A very little investigation, however, 
would indicate that it has little or no basis in fact. 

Such criticism is not confined to this age, it can be 
traced back in church papers and general literature 
for three or four thousand years. It is usually 
couched in practically the same terms and is about 
equally common to every generation. Yet Jewish 
religion blossomed out into Christianity, and Chris- 
tianity into our modern civilization, and progress, 
with a few exceptions here and there, has been, we 
believe, the law of human history. 

It is reported that there is in one of the European 

[9] 



RELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

Museums the oldest known manuscript in Syllabic 
writing on papyrus written in Egypt. This manu- 
script reaches back at least to 1500 B. C. The writer 
devotes his essay to deploring moral conditions, the 
trifling character of the young people of his time, 
and imploring them to return to the higher faith and 
better standards of their fathers. 1 Dip anywhere 
into the literature of the past, and you can find 
criticism against religion and the waywardness of 
young people doleful enough to make the heart sick. 
But the Church of God, the moral welfare of the 
race, has gone on to new and larger achievements, 
and today is enjoying a measure of prosperity, and 
exercising an influence never before known. 

All are familiar with that classic of pessimistic 
expression found in Jewish literature about 1000 
B. C. "I have been very jealous for the Lord God 
of Hosts: The children of Israel have forsaken thy 
covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy 
prophets with the sword ; and I, even I only, am left : 
and they seek my life to take it away." But the 
Lord replied to Elijah, "I have left me 7,000 in 
Israel, who have not bowed unto Baal and who have 
not kissed him." 

History at times seems literally to mock at such 
criticisms. In the third century Diocletian believed 
he had utterly destroyed Christianity. A medal was 
struck in his honor bearing the words, "The name 
of Christ being extinguished," and a monument was 



1 "Civilization Still Survives," an article in a recent issue of the 
Outlook. 



[10] 



CARELESS CRITICISMS 

erected to him for " having everywhere abolished the 
superstition of Christ." 

Voltaire said, * ' In less than a hundred years Chris- 
tianity will have been swept from existence, and will 
have passed into history.' ' But the house where 
Voltaire lived became a depot for a Bible society and 
has been packed with Bibles, while his old printing 
press has been used to print the Word of God! It 
was said during the French Revolution, referring to 
the Christian religion, that the superstitions of 
eighteen centuries had been overthrown, but it was 
only a short time till Christ's kingdom was prosper- 
ing among the children of the Revolution. 

Tom Paine, returning from France, knowing that 
his " Age of Reason" was sold on the streets of London 
and Paris at a penny apiece and sent by the shipload 
to America, said, with an air of satisfaction and 
confidence, "In five years from now there will be 
not a Bible in America. I have gone through it with 
an ax and cut down all trees. They are no longer 
timber, but lumber, to be put with all other lumber 
on the shelf. The Bible is a tissue of absurdities 
and falsehoods, which I will expose to the ridicule 
of the world." 

In 1798 the Presbyterian General Assembly sounded 
the tocsin, — "We desire to direct your attention 
toward that bursting storm which threatens to sweep 
before it the religious principles, institutions and 
morals of our people. We perceive with pain and 
fearful apprehension the destruction of religious 



RELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

principles and practice among our fellow citizens, 
and an abounding infidelity." 

Chancellor Kent, born 1763, says: "In my younger 
days, there were few professional men who were not 
infidels." And Timothy Dwight declared: "Strip- 
lings scarcely fledged thought the light of wisdom 
had just began to dawn upon the human race. Re- 
ligion they discovered to be a vision of dotards and 
nurses, a system of fraud and trickery imposed by 
priestcraft. Revelation was found to be without 
authority or evidence, and moral obligation a cob- 
web which might indeed entangle flies, but with which 
creatures of stronger will nobly disclaim to be con- 
fined." 

Despite all such predictions and criticisms, Chris- 
tianity continues to make progress, to engraft itself 
more deeply into all our institutions, and to gain ad- 
herents in ever increasing numbers. The principles 
of this religion were never before so firmly established 
in the affections and reverence of mankind. There 
is also much modern criticism against both the church 
and Christianity, but in all probability in a hundred 
years most of it will sound about as foolish as that 
we have just quoted. Some of this is sober and schol- 
arly. Some is intended to be destructive. There is 
much also that is simply the outgrowth of pessimism. 

In 1921 a manifesto was issued in England by such 
leaders of religious thought as W. B. Selbie, John 
Clifford, L. P. Jacks and A. E. Garvie, containing 
the following: "No lover of mankind or of progress, 
no student of religion, of morals, or of economics, can 

[12] 



CARELESS CRITICISMS 

regard the present trend of affairs without feelings of 
great anxiety. Civilization itself seems to be on the 
wane. It is becoming increasingly evident that the 
world has taken a wrong turn." This is pessimism 
arising, no doubt, in part at least from standing so 
close to the great problems of reconstruction in 
Europe. Edward Carpenter, in Pagan and Chris- 
tian Creeds has a chapter on "The Exodus of 
Christianity" in which he says "That Christianity 
can continue to hold the field of religion in the 
Western World is neither probable nor desirable." 
This is simply destructive criticism. In somewhat the 
same vein in an investigation based upon a study of 
the opinions of nearly a thousand students in our 
American colleges, J. H. Leuba writes : i ' Christianity 
as a system of belief, has utterly broken down and 
nothing definite and convincing has taken its place." 
A study of the views of the same number of students 
in our colleges fifty or a hundred years ago might have 
given even a darker picture ; or the selection of a diff- 
erent class of students might have given opinions jus- 
tifying an opposite conclusion. H. G. Wells, in the 
Outlines of History thinks the religion of the future 
"will not be Christianity, nor Islam nor Buddhism, 
nor any such specialized form of religion, but religion 
itself pure and undefiled. ' ' That Christianity may in 
the future be stripped of some of its institutionalism 
and approach nearer the very heart and teaching 
and simple spirit of Jesus we agree, but the religion 
of Jesus will remain the religion of the future. Prof. 
Santayana in Character and Opinion in the United 

[i3] 



RELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

States says: "Civilization is perhaps approaching 
one of those long winters that overtake it from time 
to time. A flood of barbarism from below may soon 
level all the fair works of our Christian ancestors, as 
another flood two thousand years ago levelled those 
of the ancients. Such a catastrophe would be no 
reason for despair. Under the deluge, and watered 
by it, seeds of all sorts would survive against the time 
to oome. ? ' It is perhaps true that should our present 
civilization fall, there is enough good seed in it to bear 
fruit in some new form. All dead civilizations have 
contributed much to modern civilization. But he 
who invites or encourages disaster in the hope that 
some better civilization may spring up is follow- 
ing the course of the Russian Bolshevist who pur- 
posely resorts to wholesale destruction, hoping that 
out of the resulting chaos a new and better civilization 
may come. 

Bury in the History of Freedom of Thought de- 
clares "Religion is gradually becoming less indis- 
pensable; the further we go back in the past, the 
more valuable is religion as an element of civilization ; 
as we advance, it retreats more and more into the 
background to be replaced by science/' There is 
little doubt but that science is destined to become 
a larger factor in religion, but that religion recedes 
into the background in the measure that science 
advances is simply not true historically. Lothrop 
Stoddard in his book The Revolt against Civilization, 
much of which is written in the spirit of the alarmist, 
fears the possible collapse of civilization through the 

[i4] 



CARELESS CRITICISMS 

rapid increase of inferior elements and the decline of 
the superior element, and sees the chief remedy in 
the science of eugenics and regulation of marriage. 
He maintains "that civilization depends upon super- 
ior racial stocks. At one end of the human scale are 
a number of superior individuals; at the other a 
number of inferior individuals — progress is primar- 
ily due to the superiors. But what about inferiors? 
We have seen that they are incapable of either creat- 
ing or furthering civilization, and are thus a negative 
hindrance to progress. But the inferiors are not 
mere negative factors in civilized life; they are also 
positive in an inverse, destructive sense. The inferiors 
are instinctively or consciously enemies of civilization 
and they are its enemies not by chance, but because 
they are more or less uncivilizable. ' ? He thinks under 
present conditions, the small families of the superior 
stock indicate that this element will decrease and 
run out, and that through the preservation of the 
unfit by modern philanthropy, and the large families 
of the inferiors, this element is rapidly increasing; 
hence at present civilization is headed toward ruin. 
Modern biology and psychology have compelled us 
to place greater emphasis upon the influence of here- 
dity as a determining factor in the progress of the 
race. 1 On the other hand and contrary to Mr. Stod- 
dard's theory both history and social science point 
out "That human communities progress very largely 
in proportion as they raise the general level or 



1 See "The New Heredity," by Vernon Kellogg, the Atlantic 
Monthly for November, 1922. This article makes a careful com- 
parison of the influence of heredity and environment. 

[is] 



EELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

average of their total life ; and this level is raised not 
by producing a few superior individuals, but by 
raising the weak, developing the undeveloped and 
fitting as many as possible for the best possible life." 1 

This is the theory on which Christian reformers 
and leaders have worked and are working. It accounts 
for Christianity's uplifting influence in the past. It 
is this theory that makes us optimists as we work 
among backward races, and inferior 2 groups. It will 
be remembered that Celsus about 200 A. D. jeered at 
the early Christians in the following terms: "It is 
only the simpletons, the ignoble, the senseless — slaves 
and womenfolk and children — whom they wish to 
persuade or can persuade — wool-dressers and cob- 
blers, the most uneducated and vulgar persons, and 
whosoever is a sinner, or unintelligent or a fool, in 
a word whoever is god-forsaken, him the kingdom of 
God will receive." 3 

William James' The Varieties of Religious Exper 
ience and Harold Begbie's Twice Born Men, 4 * both 
written from the standpoint of psychology, give ample 
evidence of the converting and transforming power of 
religion. In his introduction Mr. Begbie writes: 
"Whatever it may be, conversion is the only means 
by which a radically bad person may be changed 
into a radically good person. Whatever we may 
think of the phenomenon itself, the fact stands clear 
and unassailable that, by this thing called conver- 



1 Ellwood, The Reconstruction of Christianity, p. 167. 

2 There may be backward and undeveloped races, but there are 
perhaps no inferior races. 

3 Edward Carpenter. Pagan and Christian Creeds, p. 220. 

4 Both these works appeared before the war. 

[i6] 



CARELESS CRITICISMS 

sion, men consciously wrong, inferior, and unhappy, 
become consciously right, superior and happy. It 
produces not a change but a revolution in character, 
It does not alter ; it creates a new personality. 

" There is nothing else; there can be nothing else. 
Science despairs of these people and pronounces them 
hopeless and incurable. Politicians find themselves 
at the end of their resources. Philanthropy begins 
to wonder whether its charity could not be turned 
into a more fertile channel. The law speaks of 
' criminal classes/ It is only religion that is not in 
despair about this mass of profitless evil dragging 
at the heels of progress — the religion which still be- 
lieves in miracles." 

The Chicago Interior at the time of the appearance 
of this work made the following significant observa- 
tion: 

"What is the reason why there is a slack emphasis 
and an uncertain opinion among pastors and lay 
members in the churches in respect to conversion? 
Why is the voice of a psychologist clearer here today 
than the voice of the typical Christian pastor? 

"Doubtless the reason is in part the new value 
put on religious education. The thought of taking 
the child and training it up so straight morally and 
religiously that there will never need to be a radical 
overturn in life — so that Christ may finally be accep- 
ted by mere ' decision' — has grown up to be the 
master-thought of many Christian workers. 

"And that's a good thought. Don't let anybody 
disparage it. 



RELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 



< i 



But the pity is the pity that goes with nearly 
every step forward in the Church's learning of new 
truth — the popular Christian mind doesn't prove 
big enough to grasp a new truth without losing hold, 
for the time at least, on the old truth it had before. 

"Somehow it is terribly hard work for Christian 
thinking to occupy both halves of truth's big circum- 
ference at once ; it gets congested on one or the other 
semicircle. So, in this case: 

"Learning to appreciate religious education, the 
Church has drifted away from its appreciation of 
conversion " 

Prof. Ell wood makes the same point. "The ' re- 
ligious psychosis', as we might call it, has produced 
more miracles in human behavior than even the most 
enthusiastic advocate of religion has ever given it 
credit for. Not only have, by means of it, drunkards 
and criminals been reformed, prostitutes been led to 
a pure life, sinners in general made to repent, but 
the character of whole communities has been radi- 
cally altered, even transformed, in the course of a 
few years. Such facts as these are not open even to 
scientific doubt, because they are cheeked up by over- 
whelming evidence on the one hand, and by the gen- 
eral principles of normal and abnormal psychology 
on the other hand." 1 

That class of writers who think we can only be 
saved by the "thorough-breds" need to be reminded 
that not infrequently in history the stones which 
the builders reject become the head of the corner. 



1 The Reconstruction of Religion, pp. 33-34. 

[18] 



CARELESS CRITICISMS 

Prof. Fitch does well to remind us that the Pharisees 
and scribes, Herods and Pilates, prime ministers and 
politicians have seldom known how to read the signs 
of the times. "It were better, though men still call 
it disloyal and indecent, to turn aside from them and 

listen to the publican and sinners to gaunt 

prophets crying in the wilderness, for it is there, the 
maimed, the spoiled, the reckless and storm-driven 
and passionate people, the God's fools and absurd 
idealists, who have seen first the coming of most 
kingdoms." 1 

Modern biology 2 has demonstrated the very great 
importance of heredity, and the science of eugenics, 
no doubt, has a real contribution to make to the 
welfare of the human family; but the greatest hope 
for the children of men is the simple, well-tried 
Gospel of Jesus. 

It is neither expected nor desired, however, that 
the Church should escape criticism. Criticism today 
is mercilessly directed against all institutions. A real 
service is rendered the Church by a sober, accurate, 
sympathetic study of its condition, and by well direc- 
ted criticism or even censure. It is the thoughtless, 
faultfinding, reactionary attitude that proves harm- 



1 Albert Parker Fitch — Can the Church Survive in the Changing 
Order. 

2 However, it might be well for those who are inclined to put 
great stress on the verdict of modern biology to remember that biology- 
is comparatively a new science. It is not yet quite sure of its own 
verdict. Prof. Conklin, himself a noted biologist, "The Direction of 
Human Evolution" points out "That biological sanction has been 
claimed for wholly antagonistic opinions, for and, against war, 
communism, woman suffrage, polygamy, etc. Those who are searching 
for biological analogies to support almost any preconceived theory 
in philosophy, sociology, education or government can usually find it." 
p. 110. 



[19] 



RELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

ful. "Destructive criticism must be clearly disting- 
uished from constructive criticism. Between the two 
there is all the difference between a toxin and a 
tonic. Constructive criticism aims at remedying de- 
fects and perfecting the existing order by evolution- 
ary methods. Destructive criticism, on the contrary, 
inveighs against current defects in a bitter, carping, 
pessimistic spirit. " Constructive criticism is optim- 
istic and wholesome. Destructive criticism is morbid, 
given to complaining. It quickly becomes a disease 
and rapidly spreads and affects larger groups who 
seem to assume that their ability to see faults is a 
mark of superior insight and intelligence, failing 
to realize that mere faultfinding is the easiest thing 
in the world, and that it blights like an early frost.- 
Careless criticism quickly becomes confirmed pessi- 
mism, and the fruits of pessimism are stagnation, 
retrogession, or revolution. 

While religious conditions are not all that could 
be desired, the modern tendency toward pessimism in 
regard to religion is very unwholesome, and if not 
checked, will, in the end, prove extremely damaging. 



[20] 



THE GOOD OLD TIME EELIGION 



"Our faith is not in dead saints' bones 

In altars of vain sacrifice; 
Nor is it in the stately stones 

That rise in beauty toward the skies. 

Our faith is in the Christ who walks 
With men today, in streets and mart; 

The constant Friend who thinks and talks 
With those who seek him with the heart. 

We would not spurn the ancient lore, 
The prophet's word or psalmist's prayer; 

But lo! our Leader goes before, 
To-morrow's battles to prepare. 

We serve no God whose work is done, 

Who rests within his firmament; 
Our God, His labors but begun, 

Toils evermore, with power unspent. 

God was and is and e'er shall be; 

Christ lived and loved — and loves us still; 
And man goes forward, proud and free, 

God's present purpose to fulfill." 

— Thomas Curtis Clark — Quoted from the 
Northwestern Christian Advocate, 

April 12, 1922. 



CHAPTER III 
The Good Old Time Eeligion 

A WRITER in the Congregationalist and 
Advance not long since reviewed the findings of 
a comparatively recent meeting of the Church Histori- 
cal Society at which some of the records of the relig- 
ious leaders of »one hundred years ago were being read. 
If these records be true, it would seem that only a 
very small portion of the population were then in 
any wise interested in the church. The immorality 
of the country communities was of such a sordidness 
that it would not be tolerated in New York or 
Chicago for one week. The slight opposition to the 
liquor traffic was being voiced by the "cranks" and 
"lopsided brethren." The most bitter sectarianism 
was rife and communities were split almost past be- 
lief by the dissensions between churches. Religion 
consisted mostly in emotionalism. It then appeared 
that the power of the church was rapidly waning, 
and that it had lost all influence over young people. 
It does not take much insight into the conditions of 
the past to convince one that the "fine present days 
are superior to the good old days." 

From 1817 to 1830, — a period of about a dozen 
years, — 5,788,900 volumes of the works of Voltaire 
and Rousseau and similar writers were circulated 

[*3] 



RELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

in this country. 1 Outside of Washington there were 
but few statesmen who were pronounced in their 
religious views. Morality was extremely low. Pro- 
fanity and impurity were will-nigh universal. 
There was sabbath desecration everywhere, and 
among all classes. The use of intoxicating liquors 
was appallingly prevalent. Ministerial associations 
imbibed freely and ministers of the gospel often 
bore the mark of the "staggering step" and the 
"maudlin speech." Slavery was everywhere. 
Church life was narrow and bigoted and denomina- 
tions were not only wasting their energies in mutual 
hatred, contention and strife, but their activities 
were extremely limited. There were virtually no 
Sunday schools, except a few started experimentally, 
and usually against pronounced opposition of official 
boards. There were no young people's societies and 
few young people in the churches. There were no 
religious organizations of men of any kind ; no mid- 
week prayer meetings, except in the larger 
churches; 2 virtually no missionary movements or 
benevolent organizations; no Young Men's Christian 
Associations or Young Women's Christian Associa- 
tions, or Red Cross work; practically no protestant 
hospitals or temperance organizations ; no instrumen- 
tal music and but little real Bible study, except of 
the most literal and mechanical character. 

This is not an overdrawn indictment of "the good 
old time religion" of a few generations ago of which 



1 Edwin N. Hardy — The Christian Churches and Educated Men, 
p. 120. 

2 Edwin N. Hardy — The Churches and Educated Men, p. 115. 



THE GOOD OLD TIME RELIGION 

we hear so much. One could keep in bounds of facts 
and still paint a darker picture of this not distant 
past. Instead of drawing inspiration from this dry- 
fountain, would it not be better to rejoice over our 
modern religion and warm our faith in the hopeful 
prospects of the future, rather than in reminiscences 
of the past ? 

Check these careless critics and doleful saints in 
one direction, and they will wail forth in another. 
"Yes," they will say, "there may be church members, 
but they are worldly, they do not attend the churches 
as they used to in the 'good old days.' Today 
people are flocking to the lodges instead of to the 
churches." 

Perhaps an investigation here again might prove 
inspiring in its results. A recent number of the 
Christian Century tells how one man went out to 
investigate lodges and found one lodge with seven 
hundred members had thirty-five present for a 
weekly business meeting. Another with five hun- 
dred members had an average of thirty. The 
American Legion of his town has eleven hundred 
members and an average attendance of sixty men 
for business meetings, while his church of twelve 
hundred members had four hundred forty-five in 
the morning service and two hundred six in the 
evening service, while the much lamented prayer 
meeting averaged higher than any of the three lodges 
investigated. These figures are a fairly good index 
to conditions in every normal city. Indeed there 
are no organizations to which men belong which they 



RELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

attend with greater faithfulness than they attend 
the numerous services connected with a modern 
church. 

The writer is not what is known as a popular 
pulpiteer, but he has delivered some twenty-five 
hundred addresses bearing upon some phase of the 
religious life in the city in which he now resides, 
and still the same people in audiences of about the 
same number wait upon his ministry. It is to 
be doubted if any teacher, lawyer, musician or 
lecturer, however brilliant, on any other topic, 
could under similar conditions interest as large num- 
bers for the same length of time. It is not the 
speaker, it is the never-dying interest in the church 
and subject matter that guarantees attendance and 
attention. The marvel, the miracle, is that people 
attend church so well. 

No apology is here made for lack of interest in 
either the church or the lodge. The attendance at 
each could be greatly improved. But interest in and 
attendance upon church services without doubt sur- 
pass that of any other organization to which men 
pledge their adherence and loyalty. This fact should 
be more largely recognized and more cheerfully 
acknowledged. 

One does not care to picture with any degree of 
vividness, the faults of the church of the more dis- 
tant past. It becomes too dark. It is sufficient 
merely to allude to the theological rancor which led 
to the assassination of bishops and ecclesiastics, to 
papal indulgences, to the extreme folly of encourag- 

[26] 



THE GOOD OLD TIME EELIGION 

ing Children's Crusades, to the shameful murders of 
the Albigenses 1 and the Huguenots 2 to the defence of 
the institution of human slavery, to the inquisition 
and the cruel practice of burning heretics, and to the 
execution of thousands of witches. This superstition 
spread to America appearing in the Salem Witch- 
craft incident. We are shocked over the sectarian 
hate and strife in Ireland today, but this is but a 
continuation of a condition that was quite common 
all over Europe in an earlier age. It is difficult in- 
deed for one who is at all acquainted with history to 
grow enthusiastic over 'the good old time religion.' 



1 For a brief account, see the New International Enclycopoedia. 

2 For a brief account, see the New International Enclycopoedia. 



[27] 



PROGRESS IN GENERAL 



"As we survey the spectacle of the past, we are impressed 
that the study of history is the strongest evidence of God. 
We hear no argument from design, but we feel the breath 
of the designer. We see the Universal life molding the 
individual lives, the one will dominating the many wills, 
the infinite wisdom utilizing the finite folly, the changeless 
truth permeating the restless error, the boundless beneficence 
bringing blessing out of all." 

Rev. George Madheson, D. D. 

"The Christian church undertakes no impossible task. It 
summons men to devotion to no impracticable ideal. A 
Christian world is not only practicable, — in the long run it 
will be found that no other sort is practicable." 

Charles A. Ellwood, 
The Reconstruction of Religion. 

"The twentieth century has dawned with much to en- 
courage us. The deadening pall of materialism ... is 
being lifted, while on every side is seen an eager craving 
for a religion which will both satisfy the mind and 
strengthen the soul of man." 

Micou, — Basic Ideas in Religion, p. 3. 



CHAPTER IV 
Progress in General 

NOTE first the encouraging side of the numerical 
growth of our Master's Kingdom. Take a 
general view of this growth. The impression will be 
sufficiently accurate for our purpose if we give the 
figures in round numbers. At the end of the first 
century of the Christian era there were 500,000 
followers of Christ. At the end of the second century 
there were 2,000,000. At the end of the third 5,000,- 
000. At the end of the fourth, 10,000,000. At the 
end of the tenth, 50,000,000. At the end of the 
fifteenth, 100,000,000. At the end of the eighteenth, 
200,000,000. At the end of the nineteenth, 500,000,- 
000. In 1920 about 600,000,000. 

It is estimated that the number of conversions to 
Christianity during the fifty years ending in 1850 was 
greater than during the first sixteen centuries; that 
the number during the twenty years ending in 1870 
was greater than during the fifty years before; and 
that the conversions during the single year 1890 were 
fifty per cent greater than the number of nominal 
Christians during the first century of the Christian 
era. During the five year period from 1880 to 1886 
there was a gain of 40,000,000, that is, a larger gain 
than was made during the first nine centuries of the 
Christian history. But the chief gain of Christianity 

l>9] 



RELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

has been since 1890. Indeed the first twenty years of 
this century marks as great a gain as the first seven- 
teen hundred years of the Christian era. The gain in 
church membership last year, 1921, in the United 
States alone, was over 1,000,000. In other words, 
the last twelve months witnessed in a single country 
as great a gain in the Christian ranks as the first one 
hundred and fifty years of the Christian era. A 
single denomination, the Baptist, including Canada 
and the United States, report a gain of a million 
members from 1918 to 1921. This denomination now 
numbers over 8,000,000. It took 220 years for them 
t>o gain their first million, 20 years to gain their sec- 
ond, 10 years to gain their third, 8 years to gain their 
fourth, 9 years to gain their fifth, 7 years to gain 
their sixth, 5 years to gain their seventh, and 3 years 
to gain their eighth. 

But this in no measure represents the entire growth 
of Christianity. During the rapid, extensive move- 
ment it has been working itself — its spirit and truth 
— into music, painting, poetry, — all forms of art 
and literature and calling to its support, as will 
appear further on in this discussion, scores of addi- 
tional agencies and institutions that will very mater- 
ially help in future conquests. 

Furthermore, we should hold in mind that "Where- 
soever Christianity has breathed, it has accelerated 
the movement of humanity, it has quickened the pulse 
of life, it has stimulated the incentive to thought, it 
has turned the passions into peace, it has warmed the 
heart into brotherhood, it has fanned the imagination 

[30] 



PROGRESS IN GENERAL 

into genius, it has freshened the soul into purity. 
The progress of Christian Europe has been the pro- 
gress of intellect over force, of political right over 
arbitrary power, of human liberty over the chains of 
slavery, of moral law over social corruption, of order 
over anachy, of enlightenment over ignorance, of life 
over death," and of right over might and love over 
hate. 

Roughly speaking the Christian Constituency of the 

world today is 875,000,000 

Protestants 460,000,000 

Roman Catholics 290,000,000 

Eastern Catholics 125,000,000 

The leading Protestant denominations number: 

Lutherans 190,000,000 

Methodists 40,000,000 

Baptists 37,000,000 

Presbyterians 30,000,000 

Church of England 20,000,000 

Congregationalists ! 7,000,000 

Disciples of Christ 3,500,000 

In the above we have multiplied the protestant 
membership by 2.8 to secure the church constituency. 
This was not done with either the Roman or Eastern 
Catholic statistics. 

The definition of the term ' Constituency ' is varied. 
Defining it as "all those who by birthright, or sym- 
pathetic interest, as well as by actual enrolled mem- 
bership, hold some form of denominational religious 
faith, careful study of the population of. the United 
States has brought some good statisticians to the con- 

[3i] 



RELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

elusion that the figures of the Roman Catholic, East- 
ern Orthodox, Latter Day Saints and Salvation army 
presented in the Year Book represent constituency 

Dr. "Walter Laidlaw of New York, who has 

had large experience as a statistician of the New York 
Federation of Churches and in the Census Bureau of 
the United States, has demonstrated through varied 
tests that a multiple of 2.8 upon protestant member- 
ship figures is approximately correct." 1 We have 
simply used this multiple upon the protestant re- 
ligious statistics of the world. It is admitted that the 
multiple used in the United States may not hold good 
in other countries. "While not accurate, it may serve 
for this general view of the numerical strength of 
the Christian religion in the world today. 



1 The Year Book of the Churches. 1921-22, p. 262. 



[32] 



PROGRESS IN THE UNITED STATES 



PROGRESS IN THE UNITED STATES 

"Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality 
can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience 
both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail 
in exclusion of religious principles." 

Washington, in his "Farewell Address." 

"The future of the United States during the next half- 
century sometimes presents itself to the mind as a struggle 
between two forces, the one beneficial, the other malign, 
the one striving to speed the Nation on to a port of safety 
before this time of trial arrives, the other to retard its 
progress, so that the tempest may be upon it before the port 
is reached." 

Lord Bryce. 



CHAPTER V 

Progress in the United States 

IF WE become more specific and glance at the his- 
tory of the United States, we shall find abundant 
ground for optimism in the growth of Christianity 
in our own country. In 1800 there was one church 
member in the United States to fourteen of the popu- 
lation. In 1860 there was one in five. In 1890 there 
was one in four. In 1900 there was one in three. In 
1920 there was virtually one in two, there being in the 
United States today 46,000,000 church communicants. 

It is interesting also to study the seating capacity 
of the churches of the United States. In 1890 the seat- 
ing capacity was 43,000,000. In 1906 it was 58,000,- 
000. This is an increase of virtually 1,000,000 per 
year, or thirty-five per cent in sixteen years. In 
1916 the seating capacity of our churches had run 
up to about 72,000,000. 1 At the same annual increase, 
we would now have a church seating capacity in the 
United States of about 84,000,000. 

In this country we have been building new churches 
on an average at the rate of eight every day since 
the opening of the twentieth century, until we have 
reached the enormous seating capacity just mentioned. 
It is little wonder that there are some empty benches 
at some of our church services. It is better to count 
noses than empty benches. By such a count you 
would find forty or fifty million of our people in 
some religious service on a single Lord's day. One 
difference between the "old time" and- the "new 



1 See The World Alamanac. 

[35] 



RELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

time" church is, in the old days it was usually cus- 
tomary to hold but one service on Sunday and the 
minister would come once in two weeks or once a 
month. Now we hold four and five, with virtually 
turn-over congregations every Sunday. 

To look in on a Sunday morning church service 
and count one hundred fifty people present does not 
tell the entire story. Perhaps a Sunday School of one 
hundred seventy-five has just been dismissed. A group 
of fifty or seventy-five young people will gather at 
seven, and an evening congregation at eight of one 
hundred twenty-five people. So that some three hun- 
and fifty or four hundred people have attended a re- 
ligious service in that church on a single day. We 
might wish that they would do so, and it might be 
helpful to do so, but people are not necessarily lost if 
they do not attend three or four religious services 
every week. 

Some will maintain that we are building too many 
churches, — increasing seating capacity beyond our 
need. Protestant church buildings are being launched 
this year to cost $10,000,000, $12,000,000 and even 
$20,000,000, and plans for greatly increased seating 
capacity are being projected. "We will soon be build- 
ing churches in the United States at the rate of 
ten and twelve a day, and on the foreign field at fif- 
teen and twenty a day. But we can realize the need 
when we recall the fact that the church constituency 
in this country alone is now reported at 96,000,000. 

Many states now have enough automobiles to put 
their entire population,- — every man, woman and 



PROGRESS IN THE UNITED STATES 

child — in their cars at one time and go off, if de- 
sired, on a pleasure trip. We still lack some 12,- 
000,000 seatings to accomodate at one time the entire 
church constituency of this nation. We lack 27,- 
000,000 seatings to accomodate the entire population 
of our country at church. We seldom need to seat 
the entire church constituency at a single service, 
but practically all churches have several events an- 
nually that overtax their seating capacity. 

Our effort to build a nation without a tax supported 
church was something entirely new in history. The 
wisest ecclesiasts of Europe declared it could not be 
done. But the modern religious passion in America 
has not only built by its gifts 234,000 churches at a 
valuation of $1,736,524,916.00, * but is sustaining 
200,000 ministers at an annual expenditure of almost 
$500,000,000/ maintaining and endowing five hun- 
dred Christian colleges, countless hospitals and ben- 
evolences, pouring some $41,000,000 into foreign mis- 
sionary enterprises; and at the same time building 
new churches at the present rate of eight every day. 
with an average seating capacity of about four hun- 
dred fifty each, and people have been joining these 
churches for the past five years at the rate of twenty- 
two hundred per day, and for the past year at the 
rate of twenty-five hundred every day. 

The stock capitalization of the United States Steel 
Trust is reported at $868,583,000. This makes the 



1 Church property 1906 was valued at $935,942,578. Church 
property 1916 was valued at $1,301,393,687. At the same rate of 
increase property 1922 would be valued at $1,736,524,916. 

3 This expenditure was $488,424,000 in 1321. 

[37] 



RELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

Christian Church by far the largest business enter- 
prise in the United States, and with its 200,000 regu- 
lar ministers together with its volunteer and unsalar- 
ied workers, in forces employed, it out-numbers by far 
any trust or enterprise in the nation. Certainly 
nothing in history can compare with the triumphant 
progress of Christianity during the generation in 
which we live. No workers in the Master's Kingdom 
have had on the one hand so little to discourage, and 
on the other so much to inspire as we whose joy and 
privilege it is to give ourselves to the rapidly advanc- 
ing cause of our Christ. If we can not be optimistic 
today, it is either because of our ignorance of the 
past or of the present achievements of Christianity, 
or because we are born with pessimistic tendencies. 
The Year Book of the Churches, 1921-22 points out 
that of every 106 persons in the United States, ten 
only have no religious affiliation and ninety-six are 
affiliated through membership, financial support, at- 
tendance or by other ties with some religious body. 

The year book gives the total church population as 
follows : 

Protestants 75,099,489 

Roman Catholics 17,885,646 

Jewish 1,600,000 

Latter Day Saints 587,918 

Eastern Orthodox 411,054 

Of the protestant constituency, the Methodists num- 
ber 22,171,959 

The Baptists 21,938,700 

It will be observed that both these Protestant bodies 

[38] 



PROGRESS IN THE UNITED STATES 

outnumber the Roman Catholics in this country. 
There has usually been an apparent discrepency as 
already noted between Protestant and Catholic sta- 
tistics in that the Catholics report their constituency, 
the Protestants only their communicant members. 
The foregoing figures reduce all to the basis of con- 
stituency. 

Comparisons of 1921 totals with United States 
Religious Census, 1916. 

s. s. s. 

Churches Ministers Members Schools Members 

1921 233,999 199,331 46,242,130 199,154 23,944,438 

1916 227,487 191,796 41,926,854 194,759 19,935,890 

\. 

Increase for 

five years 6,537 7,537 4,315,276 4,295 4,008,548 

An exact basis of comparison is not available for 
the growth of the churches for the year 1921 over 
1920, but the churches have during the past two years 
turned their war losses into a decided gain, the gain 
being clearly more than one million in 1921. x 

The largest Protestant groups are: 

Members Constituency 

Methodists 7,918,557 22,171,959 

Baptists 7,835,250 20,938,700 

Lutherans 2,466,645 6,905,598 

Presbyterians 2,384,683 6,777,112 

Disciples 1,210,023 3,388,064 

Protestant Episcopal . . 1,104,029 3,090,481 

The Protestant bodies with a constituency of over 
a million are : 
Methodist Episcopal 3,938,655 11,048,234 

1 Year Book of the Churches, 1921-22. 

[39] 



RELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

South Baptist Convention 3,199,005 8,957,214 

National Baptist Con. (colored) 3,116,325 8,725,710 

Methoodist Episcopal (South) 2,346,067 6,560,987 

Presbyterian U. S. A. (North) 1,722,361 4,822,610 

Northern Bap. Convention . . . .1,253,878 3,510,853 

Disciples 1,210,023 3,388,634 

Protestant Episcopal 1,104,029 3,090,481 

Congregational 819,225 2,293,728 

The demand for religious reading is also on the 
increase. In 1880, the circulation of religious journals 
was 2,091,866 copies; in 1890, the circulation had 
increased to 4,805,433; in 1920 it had increased to 
7,000,928. 



[4o] 



MEN IN THE CHURCH 



"It is one of the popular fallacies of our times, accepted 
in no few quarters without anything like thorough investi- 
gation, that men do not go to church nowadays. It is 
readily acknowledged that there is a place for such in the 
Kingdom of God; that the strongest manhood finds play 
in this sphere for its loftiest potencies of body, mind, and 
spirit; that some of the greatest of the sons of men have 
worn out their noblest forces of personality and power in 
the divine service and wished that they had a hundred-fold 
more of capability to dedicate to it. It is freely admitted 
that while the blessed religion of Jesus Christ is a religion 
for human weakness, and dependence, and sorrow, and sin, 
it is also a religion for human strength and valor, and cour- 
age and heroism; indeed, for all the athletic faculties of 
human nature." 

Kerr Boyce Tupper, B. D., LL. D. 

"Do you think that the church is neglected today ?" was 
recently asked Dr. S. Parks Cadman. 

' ' Yes and when was it otherwise ? Neglect and persecu- 
tion have been her lot," he replied, "But she lives and 
states perish." 

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Oct. 23, 1922. 



CHAPTER VI 

Men in the Church 

SOMETIMES it is asked, "Why are not men in 
the church?" The answer to the question is, 
men are in the church, and they are to be found in 
the church in ever increasing ratios. The Govern- 
ment Census Bureau for 1906 shows that 43.1 per 
cent of all church members are men. In the Catholic 
Church practically half the communicants, according 
to this report, are men,: — 49.3 per cent. 

In not a few of our leading city congregations, 
more men may be found in attendance than women. 
This is reported true of Tremont Temple, Boston; 
of Madison Square Presbyterian Church, New York 
City ; of the Baptist Temple, Brooklyn. A few years 
ago I worshipped in the Auditorium, Chicago, where 
Gunsalus used to hold forth, and there were evidently 
more men than women in the audience. 

Men have only recently come into their own in 
church work. A generation ago there were few 
brotherhoods, no Men's Bible classes, or great con- 
ventions of men for the purpose of considering 
church efficiency and for formulating world-wide re- 
ligious programs. Now governors and lawmakers, 
bankers and editors, high school and university pro- 
fessors — the leaders of our nation — are on our 
church boards and teaching in our Sunday Schools. 

[43] 



RELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

In 1915 a laymen's missionary convention was 
undertaken in Chicago. It was started with consid- 
erable misgivings, but paid registrations reached the 
astonishing enrollment of 4,556 men. It was freely 
predicted that this record could not be surpassed, but 
the next year at Los Angeles another was undertaken 
and the paid registrants reached 6000 men, many of 
whom had travelled across the Continent to reach the 
seat of the Convention. 

The first attempt at national missionary conven- 
tions was during the year 1909-10 when conventions 
were held in 70 cities with paid registrations of 
70,408. Ten years later in 69 cities the paid regis- 
trations were 101,927 — a gain of forty-two per cent. 
The number of laymen who made addresses, and 
assisted in such movements as the New Era and the 
Centenary is entirely beyond accurate estimation. 

The religious census of the present Congress gives 
258 actual church members out of 435 congressmen 
and only 121 who failed to report some church affilia- 
tion. Of 96 senators there are 58 who are church 
members and only 27 who fail to give some church 
affiliation. As this shows a considerably higher ratio 
than that of the church membership compared with 
the entire population, it would indicate that voters 
regard church membership as evidence of character, 
or at least as fitness for office. 

Only a short time ago the Social Service Depart- 
ment of the Congregational churches published the 
result of a survey. It deals with different phases of 
church attendance, but within the bounds of the 

[44] 



MEN IN THE CHURCH 

survey which included Tennessee, Missouri, Kansas, 
New York, and Maine, it indicates that : Of men with 
college training, only three per cent in the whole 
survey are reported as non-churchgoers; of high 
school training, only ten per cent ; of common school 
training, only twenty-six per cent, and of the illiter- 
ate, sixty-one percent. The report places emphasis 
upon the fact that lodges and other societies do 
not seem to draw persons away from the church ser- 
vices. It was found that the large proportion of men 
who are active in other social organizations are also 
active in the church. Only twenty-one per cent of 
those active in the lodge or grange were found not 
active in the church. 

A leading church paper recently printed the follow- 
ing as indicating the religious activities in which men 
engage. A study of 700 men's classes in the Northern 
Baptist Convention shows : * ' One hundred and sixty- 
eight report participation in the general religious 
work of the church including the "every-member" 
canvass/' 26 conduct evangelistic services, 21 educa- 
tional programs, 168 social service studies, 25 commun- 
ity service, 14 conduct lecture courses, 25 athletic 
games, 30 interested in civic affairs, 4 have assumed 
specific financial burdens of the church, 10 provide 
public programs of debate and entertainment, 5 con- 
duct weekly forums, 3 in welfare work, 1 in American- 
ization work, 5 have employment bureaus, 20 engaged 
in benevolent work, 2 have personal work teams, 8 
have systematic sick visitation, 6 have gospel teams, 
13 help in boys' work, 2 active in law enforcement 

[45] 



KELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

and 560 have regular Bible-study classes." 1 This list 
not only shows what men are doing, but points out 
also how varied are the activities of modern Chris- 
tianity. 

We drop into the habit of carelessly thinking that 
our young men are not religious, that they are not 
to be found in the church. A study of the problem 
clearly shows that such impressions are not well 
founded. 

This is the young man's age in religion, as well as 
along other lines of service and influence. In a recent 
Epworth League Rally, one thousand young people 
crowded into the largest available auditorium and 
still there were four hundred who could not get in, to 
make up an over-flow meeting. The National Con- 
vention of the Baptist Young Peoples' Union recently 
held in St. Paul, reached the astounding enrollment 
of 9,000. There are twenty times as many young men 
in our churches now as there were church members all 
told at the opening of the nineteenth century. There 
are about 20,000,000 young men in the country be- 
tween the ages of sixteen and thirty-five. Of these over 
8,000,000 are in our churches. From these figures, it 
would appear that just about as large a ratio of our 
young men are in our churches as any other class of 
our population. Consider in this connection also the 
male youth connected with our Sunday Schools with 
their 24,000,000 members, with the Salvation Army 
with its 11,000 corps, the Gideon Movement with its 
thousands of young travelling men, the Young Men's 



1 Northwestern Christian Advocate. 

[46] 



MEN IN THE CHURCH 

Christian Association with nearly 1,000,000 members. 
For the year 1921, the Young Men's Christian Asso- 
ciation reports a total attendance upon Bible and re- 
ligious meetings of 8,880,800, an increase over 1920 
of 738,723. The number of church members among 
college students would also indicate that there are as 
large a per cent of young men in our churches and 
taking a part in active Christian work as of any other 
group. 1 

"We are too much inclined to make all such com- 
parisons with the total of our population. We fail 
to remember that there are millions of Protestant 
children who are too young for church membership. 
Protestant children below eight or ten should be de- 
ducted from the entire population before comparisons 
are made, if we desire a true ratio of church members 
and non-church members. Making this allowance, we 
can safely assert that church membership today is 
over fifty per cent of the church population. Well 
meaning men of the very finest gifts and training in 
all walks of life are waking up to the fact that they 
can invest their lives nowhere else where they will 
count so much for human advancement as along the 
line of some type of religious service. Hence they 
are uniting with the church and offering their services 
in greater numbers than ever before known in the 
history of the Christian religion. 



1 See Chapter X. 



[47] 



A MIRACLE IN BOOK MAKING 



"The hundred best books, the hundred best pictures, the 
hundred greatest strains of music are all in the Bible and are 
all derived from it." 

Farrar. 
The Bible Its Meaning and Supremacy. 

. . "Now, by common consent of all the great religious 
thinkers of our civilization, the supreme religious master- 
pieces of our cultural tradition are embodied in the unique 
collection of literature which we term the Bible. The ethical 
and religious value of the Bible, especially of the Gospels, 
for the establishment of Christian civilization, cannot be 
doubted. Other things being equal, a people will be Chris- 
tian directly in proportion to the attention which they pay 
to the teachings of Jesus as found in the Bible." 

Charles A. Elwood. 
The Reconstruction of Religion. 



CHAPTEE VII 
A Miracle in Book Making 

PERHAPS nothing constitutes a better index to 
the rapid strides in the advancement of the 
Church of God than the demand for and spread of 
Bibles. Much is said about the ignorance of the 
Bible in these modern days. Fun is made of the 
answers certain high school and college classes have 
given about the Bible. There is lamentable ignorance 
on the part of the public in general about this great 
literature. But in what particular period in the 
past, at least so far as America is concerned, did the 
public know more about the Bible than at the present 
time? When did college and high school students 
know so much about it? There was in the past, on 
the part of a few, a superficial knowledge of the 
Scriptures that enabled them freely to quote detached 
texts, but there was little deep and comprehensive 
knowledge of the true spirit of the Book of Books 
among the masses of the people. 

It is true that when the Bible was first printed in 
the vernacular English and German, also when 
Erasmus' Greek translation appeared they were 
eagerly sought and passionately devoured, but this 
carries us back ten and fifteen generations. This was 
a time of spiritual starvation, when, according to the 
historian Froude, "The Christian religion as taught 

[49] 



RELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

and practiced in "Western Europe consisted of the 
mass and the confessional, of elaborate ceremonials, 
rituals, processions, pilgrimages, prayers to the vir- 
gin and the saints, with dispensations and indulgences 
for laws broken or duties left undone. Of the Gospels 
and Epistles so much only was known to the laity as 
was read in the church services, and that intoned as 
if to be purposely unintelligible to the understanding. 
Of the rest of the Bible nothing was known at all, 
because nothing was supposed to be necessary. Copies 
of the Scripture were rare, shut up in convent librar- 
ies, and studied only by professional theologians; 
while conventional interpretations were attached to 
the text which corrupted or distorted its meaning." 

Indeed, this is the age of Bible reading, Bible study, 
and Bible distribution. Never was there a time when 
so wide interest was manifested in this Book of Books. 
Never was there a time when its teachings were so 
thoroughly wrought into the mind, thought, and 
ideals of mankind as they are today. The Bible now 
is studied for every purpose; for devotion, for 
knowledge, for literary models, for individual and 
social ideals, for criticism, as never before. Its spirit, 
ideals, matter, rhetorical figures and allusions may be 
found in newspapers, magazines, and practically all 
books worth reading. 

It is estimated that at the opening of the nineteenth 
century, there were not over 4,000,000 copies of the 
Bible extant in all the world. Indeed, not more 
than 6,000,000 copies of the Bible had been circulated 
before 1800. Now there are perhaps over 600,000,000 

[So] 



A MIRACLE IN BOOK MAKING 

copies. That means, if you should divide the entire 
population of the world into families of three each, 
there are enough Bibles now scattered over the earth 
to furnish every family in the world a copy. It may 
be too much to say of our own country, that there is a 
Bible in the hands of every man and woman, but it is 
not too much to say that there is a Bible within the 
reach of virtually every one in America. 

This was not true in the past. Bibles were so few 
about a century ago, that the inauguration service of 
a certain Governor of Louisiana was interrupted be- 
cause a copy <of the Scriptures could not be found 
upon which to take the oath of office. A Catholic 
missionary finally saved the day by furnishing a copy 
of the Latin Vulgate and the ceremony was com- 
pleted, with this borrowed volume printed in a dead 
language. 

The annual sale of the Bible has reached the enor- 
mous figure of over 30,000,000. In other words, some 
seven times as many Bibles are now being sold in a 
single twelve months as there existed in all the world 
at the opening of the past century. More Bibles were 
sold during the first twenty years of the twentieth 
century than during the first eighteen centuries of 
the Christian era; perhaps even more than during 
the first nineteen centuries. 

The Bible is now printed in the language of 1,- 
400,000,000, or in the languages of seven-eighths of all 
the people in the world. In whole and in parts it is 
now published in about six hundred- tongues and 
dialects, having been put into some seventy-five new 

[Si] 



KELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

dialects in the past two decades. A century ago it was 
printed in about forty versions. This is little short 
of a miracle in book making, sale and distribution. 

The two great Bible Societies, ■ — the British, foun- 
ded 1804, and the American, founded 1816- — have 
published and distributed just about 500,000,000 cop- 
ies of this Book of Books. But this takes no account 
of the smaller Bible societies. A conference of Home 
Agency Secretaries, nine in number, held in New 
York, reported a remarkable advance in the circula- 
tion of the Scriptures for 1913. The total figures 
reached 1,075,459. This takes no account of the gen- 
eral circulation of the American Bible Society in 
foreign lands, to the trade, or circulation effected by 
auxiliary and other local Bible societies. The total 
is an advance of 280,222 in these home agencies over 
the preceding year. 

You could combine the annual sale of the one 
hundred most popular books in the world, and the 
sale of the Bible would surpass this combined out- 
put. We talk about the "best sellers. " No book ap- 
proaches the Bible as a "best seller." The number 
of complete Scriptures sold by all Bible Societies and 
publishers during 1914 was over 32,000,000. Harold 
Bell Wright is a popular writer. In seventeen years, 
eight of his publications reached a combined sale of 
10,000,000, — less than a third of the sale of the Bible 
in one year. Because of a large order by the Italian 
Government of 3,000,000 copies, and of the entrance of 
our government into the Great War, which increased 
the sale by 1,000,000, The Man Without a Country, 

[52] 



A MIRACLE IN BOOK MAKING 

— by Edward Everet Hale, — has reached a total sale 
of about 10,000,000 since its publication ; that is, about 
one-third of the Bible ? s annual sale. The world never 
before witnessed anything like this in book making 
and book distribution. The Bible is not only the 
Book of Books in the sense that it is our greatest and 
most valuable literary treasure, but it is destined to 
become the Universal Book,- — the one book that is 
indispensable to every member of the human family. 

As we hold in mind ■ — or strive to, for the task is 
entirely beyond human comprehension — this annual 
output of from 25,000,000 to 30,000,000 copies of the 
Bible, it is well to remember the tremendous influence 
it has exerted in the past, that it has not lost its 
power, that its influence will widen somewhat in ratio 
with its increased distribution. To say nothing of its 
influence through music and painting, note only how 
it stimulates thought and influences literature. 

The Bible has been, and still is, our greatest thought 
provoker. It has quickened more mental activity than 
any other and perhaps all other books combined, at 
least in the realm of Christendom. The literature 
that has flowed from its pages directly and indirectly 
has perhaps been as great as that which has been 
inspired by nature through the natural sciences- — 
and the literature on any one of the sciences, as 
chemistry, botany, geology, astronomy — will now 
surpass in volume the combined classics of Greece and 
Rome. "The Bible has set the Christian world to 
thinking and kept it thinking for nearly two thou- 
sand years. The unpublished literature of the 

[53] 



EELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

Christian pulpit surpasses in volume all the literature 
of all nations." 1 But the miracle of it is that the 
Bible remains unexhausted and inexhaustible. It is 
estimated that as many as 300 biographies of Christ 
have been written in a single generation, and that 
over 12,000 books have been written in an effort to 
explain the book of Revelation, and that over 60,000 
commentaries have been written on the Scriptures or 
on parts of them. 

An examination of books on Christ, the Bible, and 
of a religious nature that are coming from the modern 
press will show that this number is in no measure 
abated. Lessing declares that "the Scriptures have 
occupied the mind more than all books, have enlight- 
ened more than all books." Says Robert Louis Stev- 
enson, speaking of the Bible: "Written in the East 
these characters live ever in the West ; written in one 
province, they pervade the world; penned in rude 
times, they are prized more and more as civilization 
advances; product of antiquity, they come home to 
the business and bosoms of men, women and children 
in modern days." 

Tennyson quotes from or alludes to its pages some 
400 times; Ruskin was one of the very greatest 
masters of English prose. But according to James 
Mudge there are 450 Biblical quotations and allusions 
in Modern Painters and 600 in Fors Clavigena 
and there must be many thousand in his entire works. 
In twenty-four »of Bacon's essays may be found 
seventy-two allusions to the sacred page. "Shakes- 



i Austin Phelps. 

[54] 



A MIRACLE IN BOOK MAKING 

peare, the first literary genius of the world, " 
says Emerson, "the highest in whom the moral is not 
the predominating element, leans on the Bible; his 
poetry presupposes it. If we examine this brilliant 
influence •. — Shakespeare — as it lies in our mind, we 
shall find it reverent, not only in the letter of this 
book, but of the whole frame of society which stood 
in Europe upon it." Over 500 Biblical quotations 
and allusions may be found in Shakesp'eare 's works. 

The Bible inspired a large number of Browning's 
finest poems. It inspired Tennyson's In Memoriam, 
Thackeray's Vanity Fair, "Wordsworth's Ode to Im- 
mortality, Byron's Poem on Darkness, Dickens' Tale 
of Two Cities, Dante's Inferno, Bunyan's Pilgrim 9 s 
Progress, Bryant's Thanatopsis, 1 Whittle? 's Eternal 
Goodness, and literally hundreds of other productions 
of the highest literary merit. In the present, as well 
as in the past, poet, painter, sculptor, musician, his- 
torian, orator, statesman, journalist, reformers and 
authors in every department of literature, turn to 
the pages of this marvelous book for inspiration, 
material and for their noblest ideals. 

It has been said that the Anglo-Saxon civilization 
has only two really great books, ■ — the one this civil- 
ization made, that is Shakespeare; the other made 
Anglo-Saxon civilization, that is the Bible. All this 
means that wherever the English language and Eng- 
lish literature go, in a large measure, the spirit and 
ideals of the Bible go. But the English language is 
used now by 40 per cent of the human family, and 



1 See Pattison — "The History of the English Bible" p. 197. 

[S3] 



KELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

two-thirds or more of all the great magazines and 
daily papers of the world are printed in this language. 
What this Book has done for our civilization, it 
now promises, through the marvelous success of the 
modern missionary movement, to do in a large way 
for all the peoples of the earth. For its spirit, moral 
standards and ideals are finding their way into the 
thought, literature, songs, and all forms of expres- 
sion of the peoples of China, India, Africa, and the 
" Isles of the Sea." The marvelous demand for the 
Bible in these modern times by all nations does not 
indicate that Christianity is waning, but rather that 
it is enjoying the largest measure of success of its 
history, and is now at the threshold of a period of 
progress and power that we hardly dreamed of in 
early years. 



[56] 



OPEN HANDED EELIGION 



"And He looked up and saw the rich easting their gifts 
into the treasury. And He saw also a certain poor widow 
casting in hither two mites. And He said, 'Of a truth I 
say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast in more than 
they all. For all these have of their abundance cast in 
unto the offerings of God; but she of her penury hath cast 
in all the living that she had/ " 

Luke 21:1-4 



CHAPTER VIII 

Open-Handed Religion 

THE OLD time religion was not generous. There 
was, to be sure, a certain amount of indiscrimi- 
nate alms giving, but verj little real and intelligent 
generosity. This lack in the past of open-handed 
helpfulness so common today, was due to many 
causes, only two of which need be mentioned. "Wealth 
in the form of money was not abundant, neither was 
it widely distributed. Moreover the appeal of the 
church was individualistic. The social appeal and 
outlook of modern Christianity is essentially a 
growth of the past fifty years. 

Church members today are not only giving liber- 
ally for the support of the local church — it was to 
this that the old-time giving was largely confined — 
but they are also called upon to support a score of 
worthy causes. Besides the church budget proper, a 
church family is now expected to give to the Sunday 
School, the Young People's Society, the Ladies' Aid, 
the "Women's Foreign Missionary Society, the 
Women's Home Missionary Society, the General 
Home and Foreign Missionary Boards, the sustain- 
ing and endowment fund of the Church College, the 
temperance cause, orphanages, hospitals, Old 
People's Homes; and perhaps also to a local Young 
Men's, and a Young Women's Christian Association 

[59] 



RELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

and to local associated charities. In these modern 
times, church people are sustaining all these and 
many other temporary and incidental interests. 

It was freely estimated that of the Great War re- 
lief funds, the Red Cross, the Young Men's Chris- 
tian Association, Knights of Columbus, and 
Salvation Army — funds approximating a half billion 
dollars — the Church people gave over seventy-five 
per cent of the money actually paid in. The Inter- 
Church movement proved beyond doubt that the 
real givers are in our churches. 

If private fortunes have increased, as they tell us, 
a thousand-fold in the past hundred years (the 
largest private fortunes a hundred years ago 
were about $250,000.00; they are easily now 
$250,000,000.00) and our national wealth has in- 
creased by leaps and bounds, Christian giving has at 
least kept pace. Nothing else has saved us in this 
industrial age from becoming grossly materialistic. 

A few years ago, a thousand dollar gift for a 
church enterprise was regarded generous. Now, 
hundred thousand dollar gifts are not at all unusual. 
When a certain church in New York City was about 
to erect a new building at an estimated cost of 
$4,000,000, the Minister frankly declared "the 
needed amount could not be raised on subscriptions 
of $5,000 and $10,000 ; it would require subscriptions 
of $100,000." Indeed, as such subscription lists 
usually run, he would need fifteen $100,000 subscrip- 
tions and at least ten $50,000 subscriptions. The 
Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York, is 

[6o] 



OPEN-HANDED EELIGION 

reported to have given $1,072,037.00 for benevolent 
purposes alone during the year 1916. 

A generation ago, a hundred dollar gift to Mis- 
sions was regarded liberal. We now hear of 
$5,000,000 gifts to missions. John Steward Kennedy- 
left a legacy of $5,000,000 to be equally divided be- 
tween the Baptist Society and the London Society. 
Word reaches us at this writing, March, 1922, that 
Gar abed Melkonian, an Armenian, of Alexandria, 
Egypt, has presented a gift of $2,000,000 to the 
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign 
Missions. 

The World's Almanac reported benefactions, not 
counting gifts below $10,000, for the years : 

1911 $150,000,000 

1912 300,000,000 

1913 302,000,000 

1914 310,000,000 

1915 512,000,000 

That is for this particular period of five years, 
$1,574,000,000. In other words, the benefactions for 
this half decade reached a sum greater than the 
entire wealth of the United States in 1800. This 
type of benefactions for the past decade will no 
doubt reach the vast sum of $3,000,000,000, which is 
equal to the entire wealth of the United States in 
1835. While this sum is not wholly in addition to 
the enormous expenditure for the up-keep of the 
church and its benevolences, it is very largely in 

[6i] 



RELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

addition to these expenditures; but as the above in- 
cludes only gifts over $10,000, it by no means repre- 
sent the full amount of these general benefactions. 
The war charities of this country aggregated $4,000,- 
000,000, and this sum is equal to more than one-half 
the wealth of the United States in 1850. 

"We have long talked of the "millionaire," and we 
are now talking of the possible "billionaire" in re- 
gard to private fortunes. But whoever thought, a 
generation ago, of a possible " billionaire ' ' in giving? 
But it is estimated that the "Prince of Givers" — 
Mr. Andrew Carnegie — made donations aggregating 
almost $700,000,000 including his bequests and 
residue of the estate. John D. Rockefeller has done 
nearly as well. During the fiscal year, 1920-21, the 
General Educational Board, founded by Mr. 
Rockefeller, appropriated $18,210,000 for Colleges 
and Universities, $12,029,000 for medical schools, and 
$646,000 for negro schools. Since it was founded, 
this single board has appropriated $100,000,000. 

The wealth of the United States is now estimated 
at from $350,000,000,000 to $400,000,000,000." At 
least $150,000,000,000 of that amount is in posses- 
sion of church people, and never was there a time 
when wealth was so freely consecrated for benevo- 
lent purposes as it is today. Under the fine spirit 
of our good new time religion, may we not reasonably 
hope that the time is near, when, like the Wise Men 
of old, we will bring -our wealth to the Master's feet, 



1 See Chapter — What of the Future. 

[62] 



OPEN-HANDED RELIGION 

and devoutly ask that He may bless it and use it for 
the redemption of men. 

In regard to a more generous use of wealth for the 
advancement of Christianity, it is worthy of note 
that virtually all denominations are stressing 
"Christian stewardship." This new note is finding 
expression in religious literature, in the pulpit and in 
Sunday School instruction. It emphasizes the teach- 
ing that we are but stewards of the wealth under our 
control, that this wealth is a sacred trust, and we are 
held responsible before God for its use or abuse. 
This new emphasis is already bearing fruit in in- 
creased pastors' salaries, enlarged budgets for local 
work, and in larger incomes for all General Church 
Boards. 

In a conference of the Denominational Secretaries 
of Pension and Relief Funds for retired Ministers, 
which closed June 1, 1922, the report shows that the 
endowments held for the different phases of the 
work are in excess of $65,000,000. During the past 
year, $6,000,000 was distributed to 20,500 benefi- 
ciaries. One-half of the distributed income was from 
endowments ; the other half came from direct gifts for 
this purpose, This entire movement belongs to com- 
paratively recent years. 

The Presbyterian Church reports gifts to all 
causes this year of financial stress — 1922 — amount- 
ing to $47,000,000. Of this amount $32,000,000 was 
for congregational expenses, which was $12,000,000 
more than was given for this purpose three years 
ago. In the last three years, the Presbyterian 

[63] 



KELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

Church has raised and used for its own work $25,000,- 
000 more than in preceding years. 

The Convention of the Episcopal Church which met 
at Portland, September, 1922, called for the raising 
of $21,000,000 in the next Triennium. 

The askings of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
for its Benevolent Boards alone for 1922 is almost 
$23,000,000 : 

Board of Foreign Missions $10,500,000 

Board of Home Missions and Church 

Extension 10,500,000 

Board of Education 750,000 

Commission on Course of Study 40,000 

Board of Education for Negroes 350,000 

Board of Sunday Schools 300,000 

Board of Temperance 150,000 

General Deaconess Board 45,000 

American Bible Society .. , . 150,000 

Board of Hospitals and Homes 35,000 

Board of Conference Claimants for Aged 

and Supply Pastors 10,000 

Total $22,830,000 

In 1921, this Church gave $23,000,000 for these 
general Benevolent Boards, and $63,000,000 for her 
own upkeep. In other words, what she gave to out- 
side causes was 37 per cent of the amount she gave 
for her own maintenance. 

In 1910, all North America was giving only about 

[64] 



OPEN-HANDED RELIGION 

$20,000,000 for Missions. In 1914, this Church had 
a quota of but $4,000,000 and paid fifty-one per cent 
of it. In 1921, as already stated, she actually gave 
$23,000,000 to outside causes. Immediately preced- 
ing this fine program, this Church also in a single 
quadrennium had raised $35,000,000 for her Col- 
leges. 

The Year Book of the Churches for 1921-22 reports 
the giving of the larger denominations as follows : 

Methodist Episcopal Church $85,934,000 

Eoman Catholic Church 75,368,294 

Presbyterian Church North 47,036,442 

Southern Baptist Convention 34,881,032 

The Protestant Episcopal Church 34,873,211 

Methodist Episcopal Church South 33,859,832 

Northern Baptist Convention 21,926,143 

Congregational Churches 21,233,412 

Presbyterian Church South 12,124,891 

Disciples of Christ 11,165,391 

The Methodist Bodies taken together . . 130,730,479 
The Baptist Bodies " " .. 60,788,534 

The Presbyterian Bodies " . . 56,381,170 

The Lutheran Bodies " " .. 33,770,710 

The curve of giving in the Christian churches 
has shot upward and, excepting a few fluctuations, 
it will under the new and better teachings of Chris- 
tian stewardship, go still much higher. All this be- 
speaks a better day for Christianity. 



PS] 



A FOUNTAIN OF DEMOCRACY 



"Twenty-five years of sane, systematic missionary instruc- 
tion in our Sunday Schools will forever do away with the 
great debts carried by our Missionary Boards, multiply by 
millions the money poured into their treasuries, and increase 
ten-fold the number of missionareis who are carrying the 
gospel to those who need it in the home land and in the 
foreign countries." 

Report of the Corresponding Secretary of the 
Board of Sunday Schools of the Methodist Episco- 
pal Church: 1908-1916. 



CHAPTER IX 
A Fountain of Democracy 

THE Sunday School is a modern institution. The 
good old time religion knew little about it. To 
be sure, its earliest beginnings reach back to 1780, 
when Robert Raikes first opened his school in 
Gloucester, England. However for many years it was 
but little more than an eleemosynary movement, de- 
signed to gather neglected children from the street 
and teach them to read and write. The Sundav 
School has become our greatest religious force, outside 
the pulpit itself. This institution did not really come 
into its own until after the Civil "War; that is, with 
the work and inspiration of the late Bishop Vincent 
and with the inauguration of the International Lesson 
System, and the development of the graded system. 

Two generations ago the church drew very few 
members from the ranks of the Sunday School. Now 
it has become the chief means of recruiting church 
membership. It would be difficult indeed now to 
imagine a church of any importance without the sing- 
ing, the cheer, the inspiration, the joyous, youthful 
activity to be found in the modern Sunday School. 
Only those who have witnessed it and have shared in 
it can in any measure appreciate the happiness this 
modern institution brings to the children of our age. 

The Sunday School is a far greater religious factor 

m 



RELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

than many people seem willing to concede. Of course 
its work is not perfect. At times it may be even crude, 
but it is far reaching and leaves a definite impress on 
the individual. Those who are inclined to criticise 
the crudeness of the work of this institution need to 
be reminded that a very large per cent of the teachers 
in the modern Sunday School are taken from college, 
high school and public school faculties, individuals 
who have been awarded the highest degrees of scholar- 
ship by our colleges and who hold teachers' certifi- 
cates, and have been selected by school boards because 
of their fitness in personality, training and character 
to teach in our public and high schools. 

The Sunday School has marvelously improved in 
the quality of its literature, music, helps, and in the 
personnel of the teaching force in the past two de- 
cades. It is very significant that Dr. W. 0. Thompson 
was re-elected president of the International Sunday 
School Convention which recently met at Kansas City, 
and Professor Hugh S. McGill was elected secretary 
of the International Council of Eeligious Education, 
as both these men are educators of national reputa- 
tion. 

The average time spent by the individual in the 
Sunday School is about eight years — perhaps a 
little less. There are now 24,000,000 in the Sunday 
Schools of America. This number will be repeated 
four and three-fourths times in thirty-five years. In 
a single generation, therefore, some 114,000,000 chil- 
dren will come under its influence for a longer or 
shorter time. It will be noted that this is even 

[68] 



A FOUNTAIN OF DEMOCRACY 

greater than the church constituency as a foregoing 
statement indicated. The church constituency- — is 
the Sunday School constituency of an earlier age. A 
sudden drop in the Sunday School of a particular 
church will appear, other things being equal, in almost 
the same ratio in the church membership and attend- 
ance of that church in about eight years. Just so, 
a sudden increase in the Sunday School of a church 
will show a like effect in the church in about eight 
years. 

Of course this vast host now passing through the 
Sunday School are not thoroughly instructed in re- 
ligious matters. An hour once a week for an eight 
year course can not mean thoroughness. It is equiva- 
lent to an hour a day running through about five 
semesters of a school course. But they are taught the 
fundamentals of morality and religion, the recogni- 
tion of God, without which, "Washington declared, it 
is impossible to govern a nation. They are taught a 
reverence for the Bible and often form a love for 
Bible study that remains with them throughout life. 
They are taught personal purity and the fundamental 
principles of morality and good citizenship; — that 
"Righteousness exalteth a nation but sin is a reproach 
to any people." They are taught many funda- 
mental social principles- — that we are our broth- 
er's keeper. They are taught the great truths 
of the Universal Fatherhood of God and the common 
brotherhood of man. They are introduced to the 
missionary spirit, given much information about for- 
eign peoples and interested in their welfare and des- 

[69] 



EELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

tiny. It is at this point that the public schools and 
even our colleges have, up to date, been singularly 
lacking. They have failed to create a proper appre- 
ciation of other peoples, to build up a wholesome 
international mindedness and to impart the world 
outlook. 

We have here a great fountain of democracy. Next 
to the public school, the Sunday School is our most 
democratic institution and it has done its full part 
toward creating a passion for democracy that is now 
finding an expression in all the Christian nations of 
the world. This feature of the Sunday School, we 
think, has been entirely overlooked by the critics of 
the church. When the history of democracy is finally 
written, this institution, no doubt, will be given a 
large measure of credit. For it has impressed upon 
millions of children in Europe and America the prin- 
ciples of brotherhood at an age when these children 
were most easily guided, and Christian brotherhood 
is the highest type of democracy. 

Moreover, this institution leads to definite religious 
results, as may be seen from the fact that though the 
increase in church membership has been during the 
past generation nothing less than phenomenal, the 
Sunday School has furnished about eighty per cent 
of these members and about nienty-six per cent of 
the ministers of our protestant churches, or at least, 
these members and ministers have come up through 
the Sunday School. 

In the above we have had in mind the Sunday 
Schools of America. But look again. In the World 

[70] 



A FOUNTAIN OF DEMOCRACY 

today there are about 35,000,000 Sunday School mem- 
bers. That means within a generation some 164,000,- 
000 will come under its molding influence. In the 
tramp, tramp, tramp of the little feet of these millions 
of children carrying their Bibles — the fountain of 
life and the sword of the Spirit — may be heard the 
tread of the mightiest moral and religious force his- 
tory has known ; for, from these ranks will come our 
school teachers, our professional men, our law makers, 
our rulers, and our ministers for our future pulpits, 
in short, our leaders in every walk of life. Their social 
ideals, outlook upon the world, and moral and re- 
ligious standards and conduct will have been largely 
determined by this institution. 

The advance in the offerings of the Sunday School 
to the benevolent enterprises of the church is quite 
as impressive as the numerical and evangelistic re- 
sults. The missionary offerings of the Methodist 
Episcopal Sunday School alone in 1907 were $524,- 
852; in 1915, $646,988. For Methodists it is conven- 
ient to study quadrenniums. 1904-1907 the Sunday 
School missionary offerings amounted to $2,157,868. 
1908-1911 to $2,169,464; 1912-1915 to $2,524,424. 
Now the Sunday Schools of the Methodist Church 
have assumed $2,100,000 per year for a period of five 
years and are meeting it. 

The Sunday School has created a literature all its 
own. The Sunday School Times, the Sunday School 
Journal, papers for the young people, Bible Study 
helps, books of many descriptions, ■ — this is all modern 
literature, the quality and volume of which few 

[7i] 



EELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

people, except those who have given the matter special 
attention, have little conception. The Methodist 
Book Concern alone is now distributing more than 
a billion pages of Sunday School literature every year 
and has been known to bind, in a single quadrennium, 
1,800,000 copies of religious books and pamphlets. 
The total number of copies of uniform publications 
for the quadrennium 1916-1919 was 275,753,196, the 
number of pages was 3,920,995,075. The circulation 
of graded material for the same quadrennium was 12,- 
995,136 additional. 

Take one denomination as an example of the rapid 
growth of this institution — the Methodist Episcopal 
Church. The story of the growth of Sunday Schools 
of this denomination and the converts that have come 
from its ranks run into figures that almost stagger 
belief. Its Board of Sunday Schools was organized 
in 1908. At that time, the Sunday School member- 
ship was 3,347,000. By 1916, the membership had 
reached 4,598,000 — a gain of 1,252,000, — the most 
remarkable advance in the history of the Sunday 
School movement. Take a period of four years, end- 
ing 1916; the figures are overwhelming. For this 
period the average increase in membership was 150,- 
000 and the total number of conversions for the four 
years was 785,000. In the eight years preceding 1916, 
there was reported 1,400,000 conversions. Dr. Blake, 
then the Secretary of the Board, and now Bishop, 
made the following observation upon its showing: 
"Methodism has witnessed many remarkable evange- 
listic achievements, but never one of such immense 

[72] 



A FOUNTAIN OF DEMOCRACY 

magnitude as this one. It is the greatest in our his- 
tory. There has never been anything like it since the 
days of Wesley. The fact stands out with striking 
force that the Sunday School is the church's greatest 
evangelistic field and factor. - — The man who remains 
insensible to the evangelistic opportunity of the 
Sunday School has clearly outlived his evangelistic 
usefulness. God fulfills Himself in many ways. He 
opens many doors of opportunity for His people to 
promote the Kingdom. The open door most conspic- 
uous and most commanding in our day is that of the 
Sunday School with its offer of young and inspiring 
hearts, sensitive and susceptible to the voice of God 
and the play of the Spirit. ' ' 

With 1916 came the disturbing factor of the Great 
World War and literally millions of our young people 
went to the battle fields, the training camps, and to 
serve in our hospitals. A regular rate of increase in 
our Sunday Schools, of course, was not possible. But 
with the return of normal conditions, the same mar- 
velous growth in Sunday School membership again 
becomes noticeable. The gain in the Methodist Sun- 
day Schools for 1921 is the largest of any single year, 
with the exception of 1909 and 1915. The net gains 
for 1921 are as follows : 
446 in schools 
7,775 in officers and teachers 
9,134 in Home Department 
22,891 in Cradle Roll 

283,262 in total enrollment 

232,277 in average attendance 

[73] 



EELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

140,355 in pupils belonging to the church 

2,289 in accessions to the church from the Sun- 
day School. 

This table shows a gain in attendance alone of 
nearly a quarter of a million in a single year. 

In 1921, 924 adult Bible classes were organized, with 
a total membership of 29,279. 

The Sunday School subscribed $10,000,000 to the 
Centenary Fund to be paid in five annual install- 
ments. The payments from the Sunday School 
reached ninety-four per cent of the pledges for 1921, 
while the church paid but seventy per cent of its 
pledges. 

If modern Christianity had nothing to show but 
its Sunday School work and achievements for the first 
twenty years of the twentieth century, this still could 
be regarded as the Golden Age of Christendom. But 
in Sunday School work we are not looking toward the 
"West. We are looking toward the East. Its sun is 
just rising. Its noon-day is in the future. The 
Golden Age of the Sunday School as to numbers, 
efficiency in religious instruction, and as a feeder for 
the future church, is yet to come. A fine cure for 
religious pessimism is a careful study of this in- 
stitution in its present condition and in the promise 
of its future possibilities. 



[74] 



A NEW SOURCE OF RELIGION 



"Modern collegiate life is today a wonderful microcosm : — 
it represents the endeavor of generations of zealous, earnest 
educators to make this period of youth increasingly profit- 
able. The number and variety of studies have been in- 
creased many fold, the proportion of teachers to students 
has been increased, improved methods of instruction have 
been brought into play and the equipment of laboratories is 
lavishly generous. Never before has there been such earnest 
discussion as to educational methods and values; the 
teacher's art has become a science, and he a great power in 
the land." 

President T. M. Drown, Quoted from "The 
American College In American Life." — Thwing. 



CHAPTER X 

A New Source of Religion 

A WELL known Bishop in this country declared 
that educated mind rules the world, and if 
Christianity ever gains control, she must establish 
and maintain colleges where educated minds are 
trained. Another noted Bishop and educator has ex- 
horted us to "remember that a college education 
increases a young man's possibilities for reaching 
eminence, wealth, usefulness, and influence from three 
hundred and fifty to two thousand fold." Still 
another: "that he would be ready to match one well 
trained, consecrated college man against a thousand 
evil doers." 

If these statements are true, or in the measure they 
may be true, it is interesting to study not only the 
development of the college, but more especially the 
growth of church membership and the Christian spirit 
in our Colleges, particularly in the tax-supported 
colleges. 

It may be worth while to remember that a college 
education is far more extensive than it was a genera- 
tion or two ago. "We need not go back far to find the 
colleges giving courses covering but little more ground 
than that of the modern high school. Education 
means more today than it did in the early part, or 
even the middle of the past century. 

[77] 



EELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

Again, larger numbers by far, even as compared 
with our increase in population, are now receiving a 
college training. Taking our history as a whole, it 
has been conservatively estimated that only one out 
of seven hundred and fifty, — some place the ratio at 
one out of a thousand — of those who have reached 
mature age has enjoyed the advantage of a college 
training. In 1890, this ratio had risen to about one 
in every three hundred. It is perhaps now about one 
out of every hundred. Not only has illiteracy prac- 
tically disappeared, except among our newly arrived 
immigrants and colored population, but this is an 
age when young people are flocking to our high 
schools and colleges in every increasing numbers. 

Of the American soldiers who fought the Kevo- 
lutionary War about one in eight could read. Several 
regiments in the late war with Spain did not contain 
a soldier who could not read. The intelligence tests 
for the "World War revealed conditions somewhat dis- 
appointing; but we must distinguish between the 
capacity for intelligence and literacy. Schools are 
not responsible for individual intellectual capacity. 
This, according to these tests is low among great 
masses of our people, but literacy is wide spread. 

The State University, or tax supported University 
is a modern institution, virtually a product of the 
last seventy-five years. Note the rapid growth in these 
institutions, doubling every decade: 1 



1 The increase in high school attendance is even more marked. 
From 1890 to 1920 this increase was over 900 per cent. This repre- 
sents a rate of increase of almost fourteen times that of the growth 
in population. 



A NEW SOURCE OF RELIGION 

In 1870, there were 6,000 students in these institu- 
tions ; 

in 1880 12,000 

in 1890 22,000 

in 1900 45,000 

in 1910 ...101,000 

in 1920 200,000 

in 1922 240,000 

These students have not been attracted from the 
church supported and private colleges and univer- 
sities. "While the increase in these schools has not 
been so phenomenal, it has been regular and at times 
remarkable. The enrollment of the Methodist Epis- 
copal Colleges for the same period ran as follows : 

in 1870 7,000 

1880 10,000 

1890 20,000 

1900 30,000 

1910 37,000 

1920 40,000 

Private institutions 

in 1890 60,000 

1900 75,000 

1910 120,000 

1920 160,000 

In 1860, there was but a single college in the 
United States with an enrollment of over five hun- 
dred. In 1915, there were a hundred colleges with 
an enrollment above one thousand, twelve with an 
enrollment above five thousand, and one at least with 
an enrollment of over fourteen thousand. But look 

[79] 



EELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

again. In 1921 there were nine colleges with over ten 
thousand students each, five with over twelve thou- 
sand and one with 25,734, and with a faculty of one 
thousand five hundred and six. Three colleges in 
New York City are reported to have a combined en- 
rollment of fifty thousand students. 1 

However, it is not the increase in college students 
to which we wish to direct especial attention, but the 
increase of the Christian spirit, and the ever increas- 
ing ratio of church members among these students. 
Here is a new source of religious influence and it 
promises in the near future to greatly accelerate re- 
ligious progress. 

In the early history of our country, the religious 
condition in our colleges was deplorable. They 
counted practically nothing in religious influence. At 
Princeton, in 1782, but two students were reported 
who confessed Christianity. 1 At Hampden Sidney 
College, 1787, of a student body of eighty, not one 
was known to be in any way serious upon the subject 
of religion. The situation at Dartmouth was no 
better. Of Yale, it was said that French infidelity 
enthroned intemperance, dueling and suicide, and a 
type of immorality that succeeded in wiping out all 
sacredness of the ties between men and women. In 
1792 John H. Church is said to have been the only 
professor of religion in the four classes of Harvard. 
An examination of all the colleges of America at that 
period will reveal a similar state of affairs. 



1 The World Almanac. 

2 Edwin N. Hardy — "The Chnrch and Educated Men." p. 54. 



[80] 



A NEW SOURCE OP RELIGION 

Note the following observation of the condition of 
the colleges of this early day: "For the years from 
1770 to 1820 the religious life in the American colleges 
sank so low that it might be called the 'Dark Age of 
Religion.' " s "Never was a period in history of the 
higher education when the principles and vices, which 
are frequently denominated ' French' had so large an 
influence among American students as the opening of 
the century. The records show that the students of 
that time were defiant of authority, in conduct im- 
moral, and in religion skeptical." 2 "What was 
usually called infidelity was fashionable and preva- 
lent in almost every college. It was a common remark 
that certain students of Yale at this time (about 
1810) were calling themselves by the names of con- 
spicuous free-thinkers of France. Writing of Williams 
College, one says: ' French liberty and French philo- 
sophy poured in upon us like a flood; and seemed to 
sweep everything serious before it Coarse dra- 
matic exhibitions, terrific outbursts of rowdyism, 
bombastic display of contempt of the Christian re- 
ligion, seem to have been the rule. A wave of 
immorality and irreligion had for a time submerged 
all the colleges.' " 3 

The period of the next fifty years shows improve- 
ment, but the religious life of colleges still remains 
extremely low. An examination of a dozen of the 
leading American colleges of 1825 will show about 
twenty per cent of the student body confessing 



1 Edwin N. Hardy — "The Church and Educated Men." p. 132. 

2 Charles F. Thwing — "American College in American Life." p. 9. 

3 Charles F. Thwing — "American College in American Life." p. 10. 

[8i] 



KELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

Christians. An examination of a dozen colleges in 
1850 will show thirty-three per cent confessing Chris- 
tians. In 1860 about forty-seven per cent would be 
found who were open in their confession of the 
Christian religion. 

But from this time on the condition rapidly 
changes. In 1900, an examination of thirty-two 
colleges showed sixty-five per cent of the men in the 
senior class Christians. Note the following table for 
1901: 
Number of Colleges Reported: Per cent Christians: 

Undenominational 13 36 

Congregational 14 77 

Presbyterian 3 90 

Methodist 7 74 

State Universities 5 45 

The average in these forty-two colleges is seventy- 
four percent, but this percentage has been gradually 
rising for the past twenty years. Well can it be 
claimed that this is the "Golden Age" in the Chris- 
tian life of Colleges. 

From reported statistics as late as the year 1921, it 
appears that about 75 per cent of the students of 
State institutions, a somewhat higher per cent at 
private institutions, and a still higher per cent in 
denominational colleges are affiliated with Christian 
churches. The average is about 82 per cent. 

Moreover, Christianity must be given a large meas- 
ure of credit for creating the present American pas- 
sion for education. The whole post-Reformation 
period has been one of mental quickening and illum- 

[82] 



A NEW SOURCE OF RELIGION 

ination. The Master Teacher, Jesus, assured us that it 
was the office of his spirit to guide us into all truth. 
The Wesleyan movement was not only a revival of re- 
ligion, it quickened a greater love for knowledge. Out 
•of it came the Sunday School, and the Sunday School 
according to the English historian Green, was the fore- 
runner of popular education. Many of our great uni- 
versities are the direct outgrowth of religious awaken- 
ings ; every local revival sends students to our colleges. 
A true revival of religion quickens the entire person- 
ality, and often one of the most pronounced evidences 
of this awakening is a new desire to know and a 
decision to acquire an education. It is from the 
Christian Church — from Christian homes that come 
the vast numbers of students to our colleges 
and universities. Our non-churched communities 
and non-churched portions of our population send 
comparatively few young people to college. The 
Methodist Episcopal Church alone in 1922 sent over 
100,000 students from its constituency to college. 
Prom the church homes of eight denominations, 120,- 
000 went this year to our State Universities alone — 
fully one-half of the entire enrollment. These eight 
denominations represent one-sixth of our population. 
So, besides the vast number of students in their own 
denominational schools, they furnish one-half of the 
enrollment of our State Colleges. 

In the United States, there are now just about one 
hundred publicly supported state and municipal 
colleges. They enroll «over a quarter of a million stu- 
dents. It has been our national policy that state and 

[83] 



KELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

church should be separate. But what was wisely 
intended as a safeguard has often been interpreted 
to mean that religious instruction should not be given 
in these institutions. For the interests of religion, 
this attitude for a time threatened to lead to deplor- 
able results. But the church holding the firm convic- 
tion that education can not be complete without 
religion has hastened to repair this defect. It is 
founding in connection with these universities, chairs 
for Biblical and religious instruction. 

Student pastors and special teachers are being 
supported by a single denomination or by the co- 
operation of a number of denominations. Often regu- 
lar college credits are awarded for this work. These 
institutions are eoming more fully to recognize their 
obligation to furnish ethical and religious instruction, 
as well as the physical and intellectual disciplines. 
Hence this work is growing in favor with educators, 
and is being heartily encouraged by Christian senti- 
ment in general. But this may be but a transitional 
movement opening up the way by which this service 
may be rendered more directly by the college authori- 
ties. Thus the prediction of H. G. Wells of the ap- 
proach of a closer alliance between religion and 
education may be fulfilled. We are at least well on the 
way to solve this glaring defect in our tax-supported 
institutions of the almost complete lack of direct 
religious instruction. 

Take the work of a single denomination — that of 
the Presbyterian as an example — there are forty-two 

[84] 



A NEW SOURCE OF RELIGION 

university centers to which this church is making 
appropriations. 

The following statistics are for a university where 
there has been a Presbyterian university pastor for 
six years: Of the first 12,706 graduates of the uni- 
versity, only 47 entered the ministry of all denomina- 
tions. Since the Presbyterian university pastorate 
was established, 25 Presbyterian students have be- 
come ministers, 32 missionaries, and four others are 
under appointment. Except during war times, there 
have been about twelve Presbyterian candidates for 
the ministry each year in the university, and the 
Presbyterian Student Volunteers have averaged about 
forty. 

The following table is compiled from the programs 
of the 1919, 1920 and 1921 conferences for outgoing 
missionaries, printed by the Board of Foreign Mis- 
sions : 

1919 1920 1921 

' ' Total outgoing missionaries 116 121 99 

Number who are graduates of State 

institutions 28 19 21 

Additional number who took gradu- 
ate work in State institutions 7 7 8 

Within a year graduates of one Agricultural Col- 
lege have sailed as missionaries for India, Burma, 
and Syria, and another has entered a Theological 
Seminary/ ' 

In the institutions where the Methodist Episcopal 
Church is maintaining definite work, sixty-seven 
Methodist students are considering the ministry and 
a hundred and sixty-two men and women are con- 

[«5] 



KELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

templating foreign service. For many years, these 
publicly supported institutions have furnished vir- 
tually no leaders for our churches. Through the in- 
fluence of the religious programs the several denom- 
inations are setting up in these institutions, they 
promise from their ever increasing student bodies to 
furnish their full quota of ministers and Christian 
workers and thus fully meet what has been a dimin- 
ishing ministerial supply. 

It is a hopeful sign that this need is so clearly 
recognized and so frankly acknowledged, and that 
careful study is being given to the problem by leaders 
in both the church and educational circles. 

Education of the future promises to contain more 
of the moral and religious emphasis, and even our 
tax supported colleges promise to become fountains 
of religious inspiration and progress. There are no 
signs of a break between Christianity and the edu- 
cated classes — but instead there is every indication 
that trained leaders from our colleges in ever increas- 
ing numbers will give themselves to the task of 
advancing the Master's kingdom. 

If the modern church did no more than to inspire 
these hundreds of thousands of young people of clean 
life, lofty ideals and noble aspirations to go to col- 
lege, there to receive a training to fit them for leader- 
ship in the many branches of our modern life, it 
would be exerting a tremendous influence on the 
destiny of the human race. 

Shortly before his death, Dwight L. Moody said: 
"From a religious point of view, I look upon the 
college as the most hopeful field in the world.' ' And 

[86] 



A NEW SOURCE OF RELIGION 

John R. Mott has pronounced: "The colleges and 
universities are the most religious communities in 
the country. " Nicholas Murray Butler: "Parents 
generally are coming to see that when a boy leaves 
home, as he must, there is on the whole no place where 
he is so safe as in college, and that if a thousand 
young men be selected at random from the college, 
and compared with a thousand young men of corres- 
ponding ages, selected at random from those not in 
college, the conditions of the college man, the two 
groups being taken as wholes, will be found immensely 
more favorable to the best results than those of the 
other class." 

It begins to appear that Christ is destined to have 
the trained intellect of America, at least, and this 
can well nigh rule the world. No one would care to 
contend that the religious conditions in our colleges 
today are ideal, but it has certainly improved over 
conditions of even twenty years ago, and very greatly 
improved over conditions that prevailed early in the 
nineteenth century, or just before the Civil "War. This 
change of religious attitude and influence has been 
particularly noticeable in our tax supported insti- 
tutions during the past dozen years. 



[«7] 



STUPENDOUS KEVIVALS 



"It is not too much to say that the evangelical revival 
taught the world's democracy how most effectively to become 
audible. This side of the movement has a long and inter- 
esting history going back to Wickliife and his Lollard monks, 
and from them to their teachers the Waldesion lay preachers. 
But the full flower of the movement only bloomed in the 
fullness of time when English democracy was moved and 
molded by Wesley and Whitfield by Ingham and John 
Nelson." 

Thomas Cuming Kail, D. ~D., Professor of Chris- 
tian Ethics in Union Theological Seminary. 

From his article in tl Christ and Civilization. ,} 



CHAPTER XI 
Stupendous Revivals 

WE WILL not here make a plea for the old time 
revival, for the spectacular in religious work, 
but will point out that our "new time" religion has 
witnessed the stupendous, as well as the spectacular 
in revival work; and will also make some observa- 
tions on modern evangelism. However, every stu- 
dent of religion must recognize the value of the old 
time "special meeting." They served their age and 
served it well, and they paved the way for the better 
methods and larger results of our age. 

But even the emotional and spectacular revival has 
not passed. To be sure they are not so general as a 
generation ago. This generation, in many respects, 
is the golden age of such revivals. We marvel at the 
power of Jonathan Edwards, Timothy Dwight, 
Whitfield, Finney, Dwight L. Moody, and other 
great outstanding religious leaders; and while con- 
scious of their limitations, permit ourselves to think 
that they are not now having, and perhaps have not 
had for the past two decades, any successors. But in 
fact their works are not only duplicated, but far 
surpassed by more modern evangelists. The Welsh 
revival under Evan Roberts belongs to this age, and 
there have been few revivals in history more sweep- 
ing or more deeply impressive. Bederwolf, Audens- 

[89] 



KELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

child, French Oliver and scores of others have won 
real victories as revivalists during the past twenty 
years. The late Wilbur Chapman spoke to as many 
people and had as many converts as Moody. Gypsy 
Smith's work has been felt in two continents. The 
late B. Fay Mills is estimated to have won 500,000 
souls, — the number of Christian adherents at the 
end of the first century was but 500,000 ! In " Acts" 
we learn that after Peter's great sermon following 
Pentecost, that some 3,000 believed. 

The Young Men's Christian Association has done 
some excellent evangelistic work. In 1917 this 
Association at Los Angeles penetrated every corner 
of that city with the evangelistic message. That 
year over 50,000 persons were reached with the mes- 
sage in all sorts of places, in the city and county jails, 
in the city chain gang, in manufacturing and rail- 
road plants, in open air meetings and elsewhere. 

Recent reports from the Presbyterian Church state 
that seventeen Presbyteries alone, with seven hun- 
dred and fifty seven churches, will employ twenty- 
four full time evangelists and three hundred visiting 
ministers in special efforts at soul-winning. These 
same reports show that during 1921, 2,000 persons 
united with the Presbyterian Church each week on 
confession of faith, or 285 each day of the year. 

At this writing comes this account of a revival in 
Scotland: "A great revival is in progress in Scot- 
land which is stirring the country from one end to 
the other, more than 20,000 conversions having been 
reported to date among various denominations. The 

[90] 



STUPENDOUS REVIVALS 

leader of the movement is Gock Trap, a young man of 
splendid physique who was converted only five years 
ago. This youth has a wonderful power in quoting 
Scripture and does it with purpose. His own posi- 
tion in the revival which has already registered more 
conversions than the total of the great " Welsh 
Revival" of 1904 is as much a surprise to himself as 
to any other person." 

But note the work of the modern miracle of this 
type of emotional evangelism and mass appeal, — 
Billy Sunday. Our purpose is neither to condemn nor 
advocate his methods. We are fully aware of the 
fleeting character of much of the seeming results. 
But this is partly true also of the results of the old 
time revivalist. One needs not go far back into the 
literature of Methodism, when this church was oper- 
ating under the rule of the six months' probation, to 
discover that the old time method by no means 
gathered all the seeming results. As high as seventy 
and even ninety per cent of those who joined 
churches on probation not infrequently dropped out 
before the six months' period had expired under the 
old methods of work. The writer recalls a revival 
at which ninety joined the church on probation and 
but two were received in full connection six months' 
later. 

But note the reported results of Mr. Sunday's 
meetings. At Kansas City, Missouri, a hundred 
special trains were arranged for to bring the people 
as far as two hundred miles to attend the services. 
No building in the city could be secured or con- 

[91] 



EELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

structed large enough to accomodate the immense 
crows that attended. In Baltimore, Mr. Sunday 
preached to 24,000 people in his concluding service. 
It is reported that about 20,000 on a certain occasion, 
gathered in an open air meeting to hear George 
"Whitfield. At the four services of the last day of this 
Baltimore meeting, Mr. Sunday addressed 96,000 
people. In Boston the number of "trail hitters' 9 
reached the astounding total of 63,484. The number 
who signed cards was 48,903, distributed as follows: 
Baptists 11,845, Methodists 7,104, Congregationalists 
6,195, Episcopalians 3,275, Presbyterians, 3,282, 
Evangelical 128, Christians 118, Friends 70, Catholics, 
1,513, Lutherans 892, Unitarians 296, Universalists 
128, Christian Science 239, Hebrews 177 ; besides this 
thousands undesignated The free will offering to 
Mr. Sunday was $55,000. 

Note this item from one of our Advocates, March 
7, 1917, in regard to the preparation for the coming 
of Billy Sunday : ' ' The tabernacle in New York will 
seat 20,000, — as many as can be reached by the 
human voice — but it is predicted on the first night, 
when the doors open, 100,000 people will be standing 
outside to get in. The crowd will be handled by 500 
ushers. Three choirs will be trained, consisting of 
6,000 persons, so that a choir of 2,000 may be main- 
tained and always have fresh voices/ ' Later it was 
reported that this mission closed with 98,264 " trail 
hitters" and a free will offering of $110,000. 

One fault with the old time revival was, it was too 
individualistic. It contained little of the social 

[92] 



STUPENDOUS REVIVALS 

appeal and often did little to correct public morals. 
But Mr. Sunday is given credit for having deter- 
mined 25,000 votes for prohibition in Colorado and 
was a large factor in making the state dry — He had a 
like influence also in Michigan. Andrew Gillies, 
makes this estimate of Mr. Sunday's work: "The 
social and civic results of his work are beyond calcu- 
lation. Whole cities experienced moral renovations. 
Wide areas undergo revivals of business honesty 
and personal purity. And whole states are swept 
clean of that pest of modern life, the legalized 
saloon." 1 It is as true today as in the past that 
nothing will draw people in such crowds as a really 
spirited religious meeting. 

If we must build the church by the method of the 
mass appeal, it can be done today with as large a 
measure of success as in the past. But we think we 
have discovered a more excellent way. 

The better features of the old time revival, no 
doubt will be and should be resorted to in the future. 
By its use in a modified form at least it is still possible 
to reap real fruitage. A new and better method need 
not immediately crowd aside the old. But there can 
be no harm in frankly recognizing the limitations and 
faults of the older method. The old method paid 
little attention to religious instruction. It had little 
appreciation of the principles of psychology in- 
volved. It was too exclusively an effort on the part 
of churches to gain members. It necessarily entered 
communities where little or no preparation had been 



Methodist Review. 

[93] 



EELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

made. The instructive factor in the preaching was 
also singularly lacking. The sermon was but little 
more than an earnest, passionate appeal for imme- 
diate decision and action. Notwithstanding, it is to 
the very great credit of these earnest workers that 
they accomplished so much of real and permanent 
value. These evangelists of the early day simply did 
their best with the tools at their command, and midst 
conditions under which they were compelled to work. 
"We will do well if we are able to match their earnest- 
ness, their fervor, their passion for the redemption 
of men. 

The point here emphasized is that the modern 
church though it is adopting new methods, has by 
no means, lost the evangelistic passion; and it is 
far better equipped for its work. Attention is also 
called to the term used. The older work was 
best described by the term "revivalism" — a sort of 
"explosive outburst of Christ's Kingdom." Much 
of its effort was spent in awakening, ' reviving' and 
reclaiming the backslider, and it was success here 
rather than the actual gains to the church that often 
made the results seem so striking, 

"Evangelism" is the better term for the modern 
passion and effort. The problem of evangelism — the 
problem the modern church has set itself — is an ex- 
tremely complex one. It includes revivalism, but 
far more. It has to do with the awakening of inter- 
est, with the Christian appeal, with Christian educa- 
tion or nurture, with the effective use of Biblical 
truth and the fitting of this truth to the peculiar 

[94] 



STUPENDOUS REVIVALS 

needs of this new age, and with the promulgation of 
the gospel not »only in the home land, but in all lands. 
Modern evangelism sets itself the large task of 
making Christianity effective, not only in the con- 
version of the individual, but in the development of 
both the individual and society to their highest 
possibility. It stands "for the perfecting of the 
saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying 
of the body of Christ : Till we all come in the Unity 
of the faith, and the knowledge of the Son of God, 
unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature 
of the fullness of Christ." 1 Its aim also is to estab- 
lish that new Kingdom — the new heavens and the 
new earth — wherein shall dwell, socially and inter- 
nationally, righteousness and brotherhood. 

Evangelistic work today includes a hundred and 
one things hardly thought of two generations ago. 
And this is true of the foreign field as well as of the 
home field. Even in the foreign field, among un- 
taught peoples, the earlier missionary effort was 
largely revivalistic. It is now evangelistic. It con- 
cerns itself with the entire life of the individual and 
community. It interests itself in manual training, 
agriculture, sanitation, hospitals, dispensaries, 
schools, with social conditions, in short with the 
entire well being of the people, as well as in the 
religious instruction and religious appeal. 

It is a long step from that of simply calling a 
single soul to repentance, to the full redemption of 
that soul both as an individual and as he is related to 



1 Ephesians 4:12-13. 

[95] 



KELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

society. It is a long step from simply making an 
appeal for new members for a local church, to that 
of making that church effective in building up the 
local community life, and in carrying its full share of 
the redemption of the heathen world. Modern 
evangelism is pledged to this larger task. Its work 
is not so spectacular. It is deeper and far more com- 
prehensive. It is devoted to the study of child 
nature with the thought of intelligently fitting itself 
to the child's need, and does much of its work 
through the Sunday School. Along with the declara- 
tion of the gospel, it gives itself to a study of indivi- 
dual and social psychology and is thus saved from 
much of the crude work of the past. It gives atten- 
tion to the correction of social wrong, and the im- 
provement of social conditions with a view of helping 
to make possible wholesome Christian living. 

Not only does it include many things that were 
left out by the old evangelism, — it has lost interest 
in things that engaged the thought and energies of 
our fathers. It is wasting little time in antagonizing 
other denominations, but seeks co-operation with all 
recognized branches of Christianity in the world 
task of building the Master's kingdom. The battle 
now is not so much between Protestantism and 
Catholicism, or between Calvinism and Arminianism, 
or the Methodists and the Disciples. It is between sin 
and righteousness. "The weightier matters of the 
law have finally gotten their chance against the 

[96] 



STUPENDOUS EEVIVALS 

tithed mint, anise and cummin of a sectarianism 
which passed for religion." 1 

With a full, rich, authentic New Testament 
evangel, modern evangelism has wheeled into line 
'with contemporary life.' It does not fear to use 
modern agencies. It is looking to psychology and 
social science for guidance without breaking with the 
Bible, for truth and inspiration. It fully appre- 
ciates the bigness of the task with all its immense 
and intricate complexities, and it is supplementing, 
not discarding, the old evangelism with all the 
weapons of this new age in an effort to master that 
task. That task is not mere revivalism but the full 
realization of the ideals of Jesus for both the in- 
dividual and society, and the realization of these 
ideals for all peoples the world around. This kind 
of evangelism is prevalent and growing in all the 
great denominations. 

The chief point to be made here, however, is that 
evangelistic results, by whatever method, are greater 
today than ever before in the history of the Chris- 
tian Church; that the better features of the old 
revivalism may still be effectively used; that we need 
not look to the past alone for sweeping victories. 
The present decade has witnessed triumphs along 
every line of religious endeavor of a character little 
dreamed of by the great revivalists of the earlier day. 
Can it be that the church is just entering upon its 

Creed'Pp^lse.^ 11 ^ 111 Fraser McDowe11 — ''The New Age and Its 

[97] 



KELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

Golden Age in Sunday School work, in evangelistic 
passion and activity and in missionary conquest all 
at one time? 



[98 



THE ONGOINGS OF HISTORY 



"No phenomena in history are more marked, nor probably 
more fraught with significance, than the change which in 
the last century — it might be truly said within the last 
twenty-five years — has come into the thought of the Chris- 
tian Church with reference to Missions. The Missionary 
enterprise is now a common enthusiasm of Protestantism." 

George P. Maines. 
"Christianity and the New Age" 

"Any social order that is to endure must be built on a 
world-wide scale. It follows that a social religion must be 
a missionary religion, carrying enlightened social values, 
social patterns, civilization as it has been developed to all 
peoples. It was no accident, therefore, that Jesus, if his 
religion was truly social and humanitarian, as we have 
argued, commanded his followers to go and make disciples 
of all nations. Neither is it an accident that historical 
Christianity at its best has always been a missionary re- 
ligion." 

Charles A. Ellwood, 
"The Reconstruction of Religion" 



CHAPTER XII 
The Ongoings of History 

FOREIGN missions, so far as they have been pro- 
moted by American churches, are, for the most 
part, a work of the past one hundred years. The 
Methodist Episcopal Church first engaged in this 
branch of religious activity in 1819. Its recent Cen- 
tenary movement was a celebration of this event. It 
was not till 1813 that the English Parliament allowed 
Missionaries to go to India. The American Board 
was founded 1810, the Baptist Board 1814, the Protes- 
tant Episcopal Missionary Society 1820, the United 
Presbyterian Missionary Society 1859. It is not too 
much to say that the real success of foreign missions 
belongs to the past generation, and today, missionary 
activity marks the chief ongoings of history. To obey 
the divine command "Go teach all Nations' ' has be- 
come the leading passion of the modern church. 

From 1650 to 1800, a period of one hundred fifty 
years, twelve missionary societies were formed. From 
1800 to 1830, a period of thirty years, twenty-two 
were formed, — that is almost twice as many in 
thirty years as in the previous hundred and fifty 
years. Now watch these societies grow : 

1830 to 1840 16 

1840 to 1850 25 

1850 to 1860 34 

[101] 



KELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

1860 to 1870 41 

1870 to 1880 57 

1880 to 1890 92 

1890 to 1900 100 

In 1880 the income in all missionary treasuries was 
$75,000. In 1900 the income of all treasuries was 
$19,000,000. In 1920 it was $40,000,000. In 1600, 
seven per cent of the territory of the world was con- 
trolled by Christian nations; in 1900, eighty-two per 
cent of the territory of the world was controlled by 
Christian nations. In 1921, $56,000,000 was given 
for Protestant missionaries all told. The United 
States and Canada gave $41,000,000, England gave 
$12,000,000, the remainder of Europe $3,000,000. 

Note the following table indicating gifts to Missions 
in the United States and Canada : 

1900 $6,000,000 

1904 8,000,000 

1908 10,000,000 

1910 12,000,000 

1912 15,000,000 

1915 18,774,000 

1916 20,405,000 

1917 20,437,000 

1918 22,182,000 

1919 30,872,000 

1920 40,204,595 

During the four years from 1898 to 1902, seven 
hundred eighty volunteer students sailed for the 
foreign field. During the next four years one thou- 
sand sailed. During the next four years twelve hun- 

[102] 



THE ONGOINGS OF HISTORY 

dred eighty, and during the next, ending with 1914, 
two thousand sailed. 

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, there 
were about 50,000 heathen converts. At the beginning 
of the twentieth, about 3,000,000. At the beginning 
of the nineteenth century there were no open doors 
to the heathen field. At the beginning of the twen- 
tieth, there were no closed doors — all barriers had 
been broken down, and heathen lands were inviting 
the coming of the missionary. As one has expressed 
it: "At the beginning of the nineteenth century, 
there was an occasional outpost at some strategical 
point. At the beginning of the twentieth, there were 
ten thousand batteries at as many strategical points. ' ' 

But the real missionary progress has been made 
during the first twenty years of the twentieth cen- 
tury. "In the entire heathen world the number of 
employed missionaries from Christian lands approxi- 
mates about 21,500, to which are to be added 105,000 
native workers. The direct fruitage of missionary 
efforts in the fields occupied is represented by more 
than 7,000,000 living native Christians." Had the 
Church of God nothing to show to its credit for the 
past fifty years but its missionary conquests, these 
alone would constitute a real marvel in religious 
history. 

Sherwood Eddy in a visit to China, 1915, spoke in 
twelve cities to 121,000 members of the educated 
classes, admitted by ticket only, in an effort to reach 
the leaders of China. As a result, seven thousand 
high officials, scholars, and ruling gentrymen, who 

[103] 



KELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

practically hold the destiny of the nation in their 
hands, turned to Christianity and are now enrolled 
in classes for Bible study. 

The first missionary conference in China was held 
in 1877. At that time the communicant strength 
numbered less than 14,000. In 1890, when the second 
great conference convened, the Protestant Church 
membership had increased threefold (37,287). By 
1907, when the third great conference was held, thirty 
years after the first conference, an increase of thir- 
teen fold was reported. When the National Christian 
conference met in May, 1922, the numbered com- 
municant strength of the Protestant Church in China 
approximated 375,000. This is over four-fold the 
strength of the church twenty years ago, to say noth- 
ing of the great increase in native leadership, large 
Christian institutions and the influence of the Chris- 
tian Church, all of which are beyond the power of 
figures and words to describe. 

"Because of an absurdly inadequate missionary 
force," writes Bishop Frank W. Warne concerning 
India, "we have had to deny admission into the 
Methodist Church a waiting list in India alone of 
160,000 hungry souls. In addition to this, the people 
who are just beginning to turn to Christ number 
500,000 to 1,000,000. In the caste in which the mass 
movement is spreading, there are 11,000,000 and the 
total community among whom the movement is work- 
ing numbers 50,000,000." 

The significance of this waiting list of 160,000, with 
over 500,000 just turning, will become apparent when 

[104] 



THE ONGOINGS OF HISTORY 

it is remembered that there were only 500,000 follow- 
ers of Christ at the end of the first century's efforts. 
Another writes : ■ l Churches are packed to the doors 
in Mexico. In previous times, the annual sale of the 
Bible and parts of the Bible reached, as a high-water 
mark, 22,000. The sale for the year 1915 reached 
63,000, and Missionaries state that tens of thousands 
more could have been sold had works been available. 
Bishop Stuntz, referring to South America, recently 
declared: " Never in the history of the Continent 
have so many converts been gathered together as have 
been in the past year." And thus the story runs in 
every kindred tribe and tongue in which missionary 
effort is being carried on. 

In 1907, the Presbyterian communicants on the 
foreign field numbered 70,477; in 1917, there were 
161,470; in 1922, the native church members num- 
bered 196,175. 

The recent Baptist convention held June 14-20, 
1922, at Indianapolis, reported that: "In Africa an 
evangelistic ingathering has been taking place which 
has served to recall the historic Pentecost on the 
Congo, thirty-five years ago. The Burma Mission 
reports 4,783 baptisms during the year, making a 
total church membership of 73,653. One of the most 
encouraging reports comes by cablegram from the 
new field north of Kentung, Burma, across the 
Chinese border, where since January 1, 1922, more 
than 2,500 converts have been baptized. Missionaries 
in Assam have written of unusually large accessions 
of church membership. India never seems to have 

[105] 



KELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

been so wide open to the gospel as it is today. Letters 
from Bussia reveal an astonishing growth, in Baptist 
churches there. According to the estimate of Bussian 
leaders, the proposed union of the two Baptist bodies 
now known as the All-Russian Baptist Union and the 
All-Russian Evangelical Christian Union, would con- 
stitute the second largest Baptist body in the world, 
with about 2,000,000 members." 1 

The Methodist Episcopal Church enjoyed during 
the year 1921, in the foreign field, the largest increase 
by far ever reported — 37,520. This increase is more 
than double the average increase for the three years 
— 1917, 1918, 1919. During the same year, one hun- 
dred seventy-five new missionaries were sent abroad. 
There are 1,386 native preachers who are full members 
of the conferences, which is an increase of 138 over the 
preceding year ; 284 natives are in preparatory mem- 
bership in the conferences, an increase >of 78. There 
are 18,377 other preachers and workers, which means 
the remarkable increase of 3,406 in a single year. 
There are 10,734 Sunday Schools, an increase of 541 
in the year, with 491,233 scholars, an increase of 
39,186. The report for this year (1922) also shows 
an increase of 122 churches. The financial strength 
of the foreign work of this denomination is shown 
by the fact that $2,919,609 was raised for self-support. 

At the Cleveland Missionary Convention, 1902, 
Bishop Andrews made the following fine contrast: 



1 Much attention is also now given to the study of Missions. 
Thousands of people are organized in what are called mission study- 
classes. In 1921 the Presbyterian Church thus had an enrollment 
of 137,849. 1922 saw an enrollment of 179,630. 

[106] 



THE ONGOINGS OF HISTORY 

1 ' Contrast the beginning and end of the last century. 
Use the elaborate and reliable tables prepared by Dr. 
Dennis. What do they declare? On the one hand 
perhaps six or eight missionary societies; on the 
other, more than five hundred, half of them immed- 
iately working in the foreign fields, and the other 
auxilliary to them. On the one hand, perhaps one 
hundred ordained ministers laboring in the foreign 
lands; on the other, six thousand ordained mission- 
aries in those fields, assisted by perhaps twice that 
number of unordained missionaries, physicians, 
teachers, printers, helpers of all sorts. On the one 
hand, a Church so small as scarcely to be counted ; on 
the other, a Church in heathen lands of one and a 
half million communicants, with a Christian popula- 
tion of three times that number. On the one hand, 
no native helper of whom we know aught; on the 
other, seventy thousand native helpers, of whom four 

thousand are ordained ministers Yet more 

prophetic are the native schools with more than a 
million pupils, one-third of them in advanced studies, 
preparing for wide influence in society and the 
Church. Consider also the one hundred and sixty 
mission presses, issuing a vast volume of Christian 
literature in many tongues. The century began with 
perhaps forty versions of the Bible open for one- 
fiftieth of the race ; it closed with four hundred and 
fifty — a gift of pentecostal tongues to four-fifths of 
the race." 

Had he lived to see the present day, it would be 
interesting indeed to note what contrast and hopeful 

[107] 



KELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

observations the bishop might have made concerning 
the first twenty years of the present century, par- 
ticularly concerning the Centenary movement in his 
own church, which single-handed, raised $105,000,- 
000 for home and foreign missions, to be paid in a 
period of five years. 

In the quadrennium 1912-16 the total receipts of 
the Board of Home Missions and Church Extension 
from all sources were $4,495,826. In 1919-20 the 
receipts were $6,612,593, and in 1920-21 the receipts 
will be $5,347,842, This is, for a single year, $552,- 
016 more than for the whole quadrennium previously, 
and last year was $1,116,667 more than for the total 
quadrennium preceding. 

For the Foreign Board the total receipts from all 
sources for the entire four years of the 1912-16 quad- 
rennium were $6,311,261, and for the last year were 
$6,612,593, so that last year's receipts were $300,000 
more in a single year than were received in the whole 
quadrennium preceding. 1 

Look at the magnificent result for the year: 

Centenary $14,290,792 

The Woman's Foreign Missionary 

Society 2,267,767 

The Woman's Home Missionary So- 
ciety 2,828,797 

Total $19,387,356 



1 Figures taken from an address by Bishop Thomas Nicholson, at 
the Detroit Conference — 1921. 



[108] 



THE ONGOINGS OF HISTORY 

This sum given by the Methodist Episcopal Church 
is greater than that given by all the churches in 1900. 
As an index to many modern movements, take the 
Women's Foreign Missionary Society of this church, 
founded in 1869. In fifty years this society had 
raised $20,000,000, gained a membership of 400,000, 
and had sent 600 missionaries to the field. Prepara- 
tory to celebrating its fiftieth anniversary, it set up, 
1914, a number of goals to be reached by 1919. The 
goals were : 

Magazines 180,000 

Money $1,600,000 

Missionaries , . 1,000 

Members 400,000 

Before the five years expired, the money goal was 
increased to $2,000,000. Their Jubilee report for 
1919, was 

Magazines, 212,333, gain in five years of 41%. 
Money, $2,006,370, a gain in five years of over 100%. 
Missionaries, 1087. 
Members, 459,498, a gain of 44%. 

The report for 1921, including tuitions, was $2,- 
686,301, and the membership had increased to 613,- 
768, making this the largest woman's organization in 
the world. 

The Women's Home Missionary Society has a mem- 
bership of 428,169 and raised last year $2,716,453. 
Its work is largely that of Christianizing and Ameri- 
canizing the foreign element in this country. It 
claims to be the largest Americanization organization 
in our country. 

[109] 



EELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

Here are two women's organizations in a single 
denomination with a membership aggregating over a 
million and with, an annual income of about five and 
one-half million dollars devoted entirely to altruistic 
and missionary work. No other age in the history of 
the Christian church can make such a showing. This 
is the day of Christianity's very greatest conquests, 
both in the home and foreign field, and these con- 
quests very largely constitute the ongoings of history. 



|nol 



BY-PRODUCTS OF THE CHURCH 



"The race has now crossed the Great Divide of human 
history, and numberless streams of tendency are all un- 
consciously moving toward the oneness of the great future. ,, 

Josiah Strong. 



CHAPTER XIII 
By-Products of the Church 

MUCH of the very best fruits of the church is 
to be found in its by-products. The Christian 
Church itself is not only growing by leaps and 
bounds, but at the same time it is inspiring many 
allied religious activities which in the aggregate 
may nearly equal the influence of the church proper. 
Not long since the writer overheard a " doleful 
saint" deploring the low condition of religion in a 
certain city of about 8,000 population. "We replied 
off-hand, that " there was twice as much religion in 
the town as six years ago." Asked to explain, we 
were able to say: "Of the twelve churches, every one 
is as strong and some of them very much stronger 
than they were a half dozen years ago. Besides, dur- 
ing that time, we have built at a cost of $80,000, a 
modern Young Men's Christian Association, which 
has supplemented the work of the churches by its 
Bible classes and numerous religious activities. "We 
have built a fine new hospital at a cost of $150,000, 
and are treating nearly 1,000 cases a year — one-fifth 
of this work is extended free to those unable to pay. 
We have thoroughly organized our charities and 
keep the treasury so well supplied that no family is 
in want in the city. We are maintaining a trained 
county nurse, a trained school nurse, a county 

[W3] 



KELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

physician on salary, so that the poor are receiving 
adequate medical care and treatment, and we have 
voted out the saloon by a majority of 2,000, and are 
succeeding in keeping it out. Your old time religion 
of ten years ago was content to confine itself largely 
to comfortable churches and to take little interest in 
these modern activities." 

We freely! admit, of course, that our modern 
Christian activities were largely born of that earlier 
faith and zeal, but the modern church, while by no 
means exhausted in faith and spirit, is giving itself 
in service in a measure never before known in the 
history of Christianity. Take the matter of Christian 
charity within the church: — "Of the charity 
workers of the country, 92 per cent are church 
members." 1 

What a wonderful stream of healing and blessing 
it has been! "Washing away so many tears, soften- 
ing so much suffering, saving so many young lives 
from misery and sin, ministering to so many death- 
beds, making the solitary evening of life sweet to so 
many forsaken ones, and the morning glad to so 
many who would have been born to sorrow and 
shame ; which in so many countries has cared for the 
sick, the blind, the deaf, the crippled, the outcast 
and tempted, the young, the orphan, the foundling, 
and the aged. Surely, if anything is a foregleam 
of that kingdom of heaven which is yet to shine on 
earth, it is the brotherhood of spirit shown in the 



1 Arthur J. Brown, Secretary of the Presbyterian Board of 
Foreign Missions, in an address which appeared in the Christian 
Pacific Advocate, Sept. 26, 1918. 

r»4] 



BY-PRODUCTS OF THE CHURCH 

charity of the modern world. ' n This is most distinctly 
a fruit of Christ's teaching. 

The Year Book of the Churches for 1921-1922 lists 
some 250 undenominational and interdenominational 
agencies organized to serve on lines in accord with the 
spirit and purpose of Christ. And this list is by no 
means complete. We shall name but a few. These 
movements are virtually all modern. They belong to 
the "New Time Religion.' ' 

The Young Men's Christian Association is a modern 
institution. 2 In North America alone there are 2,120 
Associations, with a membership of just about one 
million, of which 220,000 are boys. The property 
valuation amounts to $150,000,000, with an annual 
operating expenditure of $50,000,000. These figures 
do not include money spent for war work. How varied 
are the activities of this institution, the following 
items will indicate: 70,000 socials and entertain- 
ments, 85,000 positions found through the employ- 
ment section, 345,000 different men and boys regis- 
tered in gymnasium classes, 122,000 different men 
and boys enrolled in educational courses, 118,000 in 
regular courses of Bible Study, 36,000 decisions for 
Christ, and 11,000 united with churches. Friends of 
this institution gave $167,000,000 for war work and 
$158,000,000 was actually spent on the field in help- 
ful service. 3 

The Young Women's Christian Association is still 
more modern and can boast of a marvelous record in 



i O. L. Brace "Gesta Christi" p. 101. 

2 First Organized in America 1851, in England 1844. 

3 The World Almanac. 



[»5] 



KELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

Christian service. In the United States it has about 
1,100 associations, a membership of 560,000, with 
property value of $20,500,000. Its budget for 1921 
was over $19,000,000. 

The Salvation Army is quite a modern movement. 3 
But already its drum-beat is heard in every city of 
any importance around the world. For the year end- 
ing December, 1920, this modern religious movement 
reports the following international statistics: Coun- 
tries occupied, 70 ; languages in which it is preaching 
the Gospel, 42 ; number of corps, 11,000 ; social insti- 
tutions, 1,276; day schools, 751; naval and military 
homes, 41 ; periodicals issued, 82. Its activities for a 
single year are nothing short of marvelous. Speaking 
only for the United States, notice this record for the 
year ending 1920 : Employment found for 52,000 men 
and 13,000 women; 260,000 pounds of ice and 3,000,- 
000 pounds of coal distributed; 290,000 Christmas 
dinners furnished and toys given to 125,000 children, 
1,555,000 beds and 495,000 meals supplied. 3 But fig- 
ures become too tedious in an effort to relate what this 
institution is doing, which serves where service is 
most needed. 

Hospital work by Protestant churches is a modern 
enterprise. One hundred years ago there was not a 
hospital or trained physician in the non-Christian 
world. Now there are hundreds of hospitals and dis- 



2 The movement started in 1865. It took the name "Salvation 
Army" 1878. 



[,h6] 



BY-PRODUCTS OF THE CHURCH 

pensaries treating literally millions of cases. 1 
The Methodist Church entered upon hospital work in 
1887. It now has over fifty hospitals in the United 
States worth $10,000,000 with endowments of nearly 
$5,000,000, and is treating 100,000 patients a year, a 
large amount of which work is free. 

The Deaconess movement in the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church, so closely associated with hospital work, 
has sprung up within the past generation. Already 
its property value in the United States is $12,767,000. 
In Europe, it is $1,500,000. In the United States 
there are 881 Deaconesses, 142 probationers, and 503 
associate workers. The total number in the United 
States is 1,526, and in Europe, 907. Note the 
activities of this young organization for the year 
1921: Families visited, 362,524; sick people visited, 
62,434; bewildered travelers assisted in railroad sta- 
tions, 6,844; patients treated in Deaconess hospitals, 
38,538 ; volume of free work to needy people in these 
hospitals, $206,144; students in training for nurses, 
579; children taken to summer camps, 11,583; chil- 
dren taught by deaconess industrial schools, 167,128; 
boys and girls being taught in deaconess training 
schools, 556. 

The "Women's Christian Temperance Union is a 
modern movement, founded in 1874, but it has been 
extraordinarily fruitful in good works and has become 
one of the largest women's organizations in the world. 



1 I have seen the statement that there are over 700 hospitals 
and dispensaries in the foreign field which treat annually 10,000,000 
cases, but I have been unable up to date to verify these figures. 
Indeed so new is protestant hospital work that it is extremely 
difficult to get information. 



[«7] 



KELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

Its work has been carried on under six general depart- 
ments: organization, preventive, educational, evan- 
gelistic, legal and social. How very varied are the 
activities of each of these departments will be seen 
by analyzing but two. Take for examples the depart- 
ments of organization and education. Under organ- 
ization, we note such sub-heads as: Lecturers and 
evangelists, Young Women's branch, Loyal Temper- 
ance Legion branch; work among Foreign speaking 
people; work among the colored; work among the 
Indians. Under the department of education are to 
be found such sub-heads as: Scientific Temperance 
Instruction; Physical Education; Temperance Liter- 
ature; Presenting Our Cause to Influential Bodies; 
Temperance and Labor; the Press; Anti-Narcotics; 
School Savings Banks ; Kindergarten ; Medal Contests, 
and so forth for each of the six departments. Through 
the influence of this organization, every state in the 
Union has enacted legislation providing for the teach- 
ing of physiology and hygiene in the public schools, 
with special reference to the effect of alcohol and nar- 
cotics. Laws raising the age of consent have been 
passed in most of the States also as a result of the 
influence of this organization. It aided greatly in 
the passage of the anti-canteen law, also in securing 
the law prohibiting the sale of liquor and fire-arms 
to the native races in the Pacific Islands. It has 
preached the gospel of social purity and the single 
standard of morals in practically every city of im- 
portance the world around. This organization was 
teaching intelligent patriotism and Americanism by 

[118] 



BY-PRODUCTS OF THE CHURCH 

placing our Flag in schools, libraries, public halls, 
and by many other means, a generation before the 
outbreak of the Great War, and who knows, with our 
polyglot population, and hyphenated citizenship 
whether or not our patriotism, without this teaching, 
would have stood the test of that Great War. It was 
very influential, if not the chief factor, in securing 
the eighteenth amendment providing for national 
prohibition. 

An international branch has been formed under the 
title "World's Women's Christian Temperance Un- 
ion" and it has extended into over fifty nations of the 
world. The ' ' Round the World Missionaries ' ' — able 
speakers and organizers, have literally carried their 
gospel to the ends of the earth. Perhaps the most con- 
spicuous piece of work by the world's branch was the 
polyglot petition for Home Protection, addressed to the 
governments of the world. The petition was written 
by Miss Willard. It was circulated throughout the 
world and the signatures came in fifty languages. 
The petition bore 1,121,200 names, including 350,000 
from Great Britain. It was presented to our govern- 
ment through President Cleveland, February 19, 1897. 
All this is a new and wholesome force in our modern 
Christianity. It is worthy of remark that the two 
largest women's organizations in the world are both 
Christian organizations — the Woman's Foreign Mis- 
sionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
and the Women's Christian Temperance Union. 

The Daily Vacation Bible School is a movement 
that has sprung up within this century. In 1901, there 

["9] 



KELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

were but four of these schools being operated in 
mission churches in New York City. The movement 
rapidly spread to other cities. This summer — 1922 
— greater New York is operating 250 schools and 
Chicago has opened over 200 with an anticipated 
enrollment of over 30,000 boys and girls. The 
country at large will have over 4,000 such schools. 
The movement has already extended to the Orient, 
and Pekin has 42 schools. The attendance is volun- 
tary and the program varied — including marches, 
drills, Bible stories, music, character stories, memory 
work and many kinds of hand craft activities. The 
term is five or six weeks — two hours a day. This 
work is popular with both parents and children. 

The Student Volunteer Movement is modern. It 
was started in 1886. Since which time over 7,000 
student volunteers recruited by this agency have 
been accepted by the various missionary boards and 
sent to the foreign field. 

But what more need we say, for time would fail 
us to trace the work and influence of such modern 
Christian activities as the Gideon Movement, 
Pocket Testament League, Red Cross, Life Service 
Commissions; Orphanages, American Mission to 
Lepers, Christian Unity Foundation, Religious Edu- 
cation Association, American Sunday School Union, 
Commission on Inter-Racial Cooperation, American 
Tract Society, American Bible Society, Commission 
on Evangelism and Life Service, National Testament 
and Tract League, Family Altar League, Carnegie 
Foundation for Advancement of Teaching, Rocke- 

[120] 



BY-PRODUCTS OF THE CHURCH 

feller Foundation, American National Red Cross, 
Boy Scouts, Big Sister Movement, American Peace 
Society, World's Purity Federation, Anti-Saloon 
League, Society for the Friendless, Playground and 
Recreational Association of America, National Child 
Welfare Association, National Association of 
Travelers Aid Society, World Peace Foundation, 
American Prison Association, Institute for Crippled 
and Disabled Men, International Reform Bureau, 
National Child Welfare Association, National Health 
Council, National Council of Social Workers, Flor- 
ence Crittenton Missions, Flying Squadron Founda- 
tion, etc., etc. There are some 250 to 300 of these 
helpful institutions springing out of the life of the 
church proper, and they are nearly all of a modern 
origin. 



[121] 



UNORGANIZED RELIGION 



"The outer history of Christendom is not the whole history 
of Christendom. We must remember that through the ages, 
leaving profound consequences, but leaving no conspicuous 
records upon the historian's page, countless men and women 
were touched by that spirit of Jesus which still lived and 
lives still at the core of Christianity, that they led lives that 
were on the whole gracious and helpful and that they did 
unselfish and devoted deeds. Through the ages, such lives 
cleared the air and made a better world possible." 

JET. G. Wells, The Outline of History, 

(p. 628). 



CHAPTER XIV 
Unorganized Religion 

ONE CAN NOT define nor evaluate Christianity 
by quoting statistics. It is more than statis- 
tics. It is more than an institution. It is therefore 
quite impossible for one to indicate its progress by 
recounting the history of the church as an institu- 
tion, or by tabulating the names and work of the 
institutions closely allied to it. Like the Nile, the 
church has everywhere overflowed its banks, leaving 
a rich deposit, out of which spring growths of many 
forms to grace and bless the earth. Perhaps it is 
better to change the figure and think of the institu- 
tional phase of Christianity as the body, whose life 
giving and preserving spirit is, like a radiant person- 
ality, exerting an influence way beyond the limits of 
the visible form itself — in love, charity, sympathy, 
and in kindly deeds performed by one hand while the 
other is unconscious of what is going on or of the 
source that inspired it. 

There are Christian activities everywhere outside 
the church as well as in and by the church. There 
are manifold signs that tastes have been refined and 
conduct greatly modified by the leavening power of 
the teaching of Jesus in multitudes of men whose 
names have never been enrolled in a church. 

Almost 14,000,000 people sent requests to the Con- 

[123] 



KELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

ference on Limitations of Armament in an effort to 
inspire that Conference to the achievement of the 
largest possible results. It is interesting to pick up 
a handful of papers and glance over them to note the 
kindly things, good deeds and real Christian services 
that are constantly being rendered. 

I picked up at random some papers and magazines 
of different dates that happened to lie near my desk, 
and with fifty or more other items, I marked the 
following : 

"The subway train was crowded. I luckily 
secured a seat through the courtesy of a working- 
man. He stood in front of me, continuing to read 
his paper. He did not look any more tired than the 
usual run of toilers of the soil. Two gentlemen stood 
alongside him. The seat in front of the second man 
was vacated at Seventy-second street. Both these 
men at the same time beckoned to the working man 
to take the unoccupied seat, which he did without 
hesitancy and with a grateful "Thank you." 
Strange occurrence, wasn't it? It is mighty good to 
think that in the subway there travel men with feel- 
ing for their fellow-creatures, and I have always 
thought that it was an unknown quantity." 1 

As history goes, it was not so long ago that these 
two well dressed men would have enslaved that 
workman. I recently stood on the cobble-paved 
streets of the ruins of Pompeii — and noted the ruts 
worn by wheels of vehicles deep into these hard 



X A story by a lady, told by "The Outlook," originally printed 
by the "New York Sun," I think. 

[124] 



UNORGANIZED RELIGION 

stones, also the large boulders at the crossings where 
sharp turns must necessarily be made, and remarked : 
"This does not seem adapted to horses. How could 
they make these turns?" I was informed that those 
ruts were worn by vehicles drawn by the hands of 
slaves. 

Again : "Mr. L. 0. Jones of the White Cross Move 
ment has just returned from Pike County, Kentucky, 
the largest county in the State, situated in the foot- 
hills of the Cumberlands. There are 53,000 people 
in Pike County, with no hospital facilities. Time 
after time patients have had to be taken 103 miles, 
with great expense and not infrequent fatality. 
Some time ago, a private corporation started a hos- 
pital and after expending many thousands were 
compelled to give it up. The church steps in, through 
the energy of its pastor, and the completion of the 
hospital is assured. The coal miners of the com- 
munity have assumed $50,000; the county has 
assumed $25,000, and Pikeville has assumed another 
$25,000, making $100,000 altogether. When the 
hospital is completed it will have a capacity of fifty- 
three beds." 1 

Again: A certain editor, speaking before a 
Ministerial Association in Chicago, said: "You can 
not call up one half the homes in Chicago after eight 
o'clock and find anybody at home. They have all 
gone to the theater." One of the Chicago papers 
took up that speech, and the next night at 9 :25 a 
reporter, having selected twenty names from the 



1 North Western Christian Advocate. 

[125] 



RELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

telephone book at random, called the numbers. In 
an hour, he found eighteen families at home and two 
away. The incident has value of several sorts, but 
the aspect of it which needs to be considered just 
now is that the home-keeping folk, who are the 
backbone of the Nation's everyday life, are far and 
away in the majority.'"' 1 

Again : Another reported that a group of students 
from fourteen states and thirty-five colleges have 
organized "The Student Fellowship for Christian 
Life Service, to emphasize the sense of fellowship 
among students who wish to share in the common 
purpose of making America Christian for our own 
sake and the sake of the "World." 

Again: "The Rotary Clubs all over North America, 
numbering 85,000 live-wire business men are en- 
gaged in a Nation-wide campaign to give every 
crippled boy and girl in this Country a new chance. 
It is estimated that over 300,000 crippled children 
will be helped this way without cost to the child. 
In order to carry this forward, the Rotarians have 
formed the International Society for Crippled 
Children. . . . Arrangement are being made to open 
a permanent international headquarters in either 
Chicago or New York." 2 

Again: "American delegates who attended the 
meeting of the International Committee of the World 
Alliance for International Friendship, held from 
August 5-11, were favorably impressed by the 



1 The Northwestern Christian Advocate. 

2 From "The Epworth Herald." 



[126] 



UNORGANIZED RELIGION 

friendly spirit that prevailed throughout the con- 
ferences of representatives from twenty-five differ- 
ent countries. Germans, Austrians, French and 
English discussed the problems of world peace and 
disarmament without a trace of the rancor in evi- 
dence at the international gatherings held at Genoa 
and The Hague. Nearly two hundred delegates were 
present. 

"The benevolent work of fraternal orders is much 
better advertised than is that of the Protestant 
churches . . . The Protestant churches are supporting 
more children, however, than all the fraternal orders, 
twenty thousand being maintained in this way." 1 

"Another gave an account of Mr. Ford's $5,000,000 
hospital. It should be remembered that all state or 
publicly supported Charities have grown out of a 
religious feeling and never was there a time when the 
public took better care of the deaf, dumb and blind, 
maimed, feeble-minded, and orphans. Indeed, some 
maintain that we, under our Christian civilization, 
are pushing philanthropy so far as to endanger our 
modern civilization." 2 

After what war in all history was such effort put 
forth to take care of the injured soldier? The Fed- 
eral Board of Vocational Education was created by 
Act of Congress, 1917, making possible appropria- 
tions to be used in the promotion of vocational educa- 
tion. For the year 1918-19, $1,860,000 was 
appropriated, but the appropriation increases each 



1 The Christian Century. 

2 Mr. Stoddard's Revolt Against Civilization. 

[127] 



KELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

year until in 1925-26, it reaches $7,367,000, which 
amount is to be provided annually thereafter. By 
the passage of the Federal Vocational rehabilitation 
act, 1918, and an amendment thereto, 1919, the board 
was charged with the duty of furnishing vocational 
rehabilitation to every member of the military or 
naval forces of the United States discharged with a 
disability incurred, increased or aggravated while a 
member of such forces or traceable to such service. 
The board carried out this work until the passage of 
the bill, 1921, creating the Veterans' Bureau, which 
consolidated all the agencies dealing with the dis- 
abled soldiers, sailors and marines. 

Wickedness is noisy; it gets itself recognized as 
news. Goodness is quiet and orderly, but it so 
largely predominates that it is regarded as the regu- 
lar, normal ongoing of modern life. The mother 
devotedly caring for the home, the father indus- 
triously providing food, clothing and shelter for the 
family, the trusted business man unostentatiously 
serving his community through honest and efficient 
business methods ; the professional man, — the lawyer, 
doctor, teacher, content to serve — "dreading praise 
not blame ;" the laborer industriously providing the 
raw material and shaping it into use; the unbroken 
friendships, the helpful deeds, kind words and the 
innumerable courtesies and pleasantries that keep 
life moving smoothly and joyously — who thinks of 
giving these substantial virtues headlines in a news- 
papers? "Why? Because it is taken for granted. 
This is the usual way of living. It is the unusual, 
the exceptional that becomes news. 

[128] 



UNORGANIZED RELIGION 

"We talk about the Great War, but the really great 
wars and the significant victories, are the wars against, 
and victories over, epidemics, typhoid, hookworm, 
rheumatism, small-pox, diphtheria, yellow fever, in- 
fant mortality, and they are nearly all inspired by 
a kindlier attitude toward humanity, born of the 
Christian Spirit. Already victories in these wars 
have extended the average length of life some five or 
six years, and removed untold suffering from the 
human family. "In Havana the death rate after 
American occupation fell from fifty to twenty. The 
yellow fever in the United States has practically dis- 
appeared. Small-pox, typhoid and diphtheria are 
practically mastered. At present, in Massachusetts, 
life is lengthening about fourteen years per century; 
in Europe about seventeen; in India, where medical 
progress is practically unknown, it remains 
stationary." 1 

It is a privilege to have lived in an age that has 
witnessed in our country the passing of human 
slavery, an institution that has trailed more human 
woe and misery in its wake than any other evil 
known to history; of the American saloon, next to 
slavery, humanity's greatest curse; the public lot- 
tery ; the enfranchisement of women not only in our 
country but in at least twenty-five nations and prov- 
inces of the Christian world; and the marching of 
30,000,000 brave men into battle, 6,000,000 giving 
their lives to prove that right, not might, shall rule 
in the affairs of men ; the formation of the League of 



1 Charles Edward Lock ''Daybreak Everywhere" p. 88. 

[129] 



EELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

Nations, with its International Court of Justice ; the 
rapid growth of international law; and the meeting 
and work of the Conference on Limitation of Arma- 
ment. For one to have witnessed all this, well 
might he, like Simeon of old say, "Lord now lettest 
thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have 
seen thy salvation." 

But the Christian religion is more than a destruc- 
tive force. It does more than overthrow evil. The 
glory of Christianity is its constructive work. How- 
ever important the forgiveness of sin may be, and 
it is very important, this was not, nor is not 
Christ's chief work. Christ was a carpenter. His 
chief work was that of the builder — builder of men, 
builder of greater institutions, the builder of new 
and higher civilization, the builder of a better and 
happier humanity. Christ is the Master Builder of 
the ages, and the evidences of this constructive influ- 
ence of Christianity, as has been shown in other 
parts of this volume, was never so accumulative as 
today. 

The church by no means embodies all the Chris- 
tianity in the world. There are literally thousands 
of persons who really act according to the Biblical 
revelation, its standards and ideals, who never 
technically unite with a church. "In every age 
were simple men and women, not known perhaps to 
history, or even to those of their own time, whose 
souls and lives were filled with the principles of this 
new faith. These gradually affected social habits and 
practices; sometimes changing them before they in- 

[130] 



UNORGANIZED RELIGION 

fluenced legislation, sometimes, by a favoring public 
accident, being able first to reform laws and public 
officials; thus day by day, by imperceptible steps 
purifying church, states and people; gradually caus- 
ing certain great abuses and wrongs to melt away 
before the fervency of their spirit, and the innocence 
and beneficence of their lives. Though for the 
most part unknown perhaps to ecclesiastical records, 
or the historian of empires, they have illustrated and 
transmitted the divine truths which they received 
from Him. In lives of purity and human brother- 
hood, in honesty, faithfulness, compassion and true 
humanity, they have sought to follow their Great 
Leader. While living for Him, they have lived for 
the human race. Their spirit and their sacrifice have 
made it possible that ages hence some of the great 
evils of mankind should come to an end, that some 
tears should forever be wiped away, and a fair pros- 
pect be held forth of a distant future of humanity, 
justice and righteousness." 1 

It is this overflow, this unseen current, this in- 
working leaven, this fine spirit of helpfulness, this 
unorganized Christianity, that so many fail to recog- 
nize when they complain of the modern influence of 
the Christian religion, and the work of the Christian 
Church. Criticism is usually made against the insti- 
tutional phase of Christianity, but one wonders how 
long this rich overflow would continue without the 
institutional church — that provides ministers, schools, 
colleges, a Christian literature, book concerns for 



1 "Gesta Christi" by C. L. Brace, p. 3. 

[131] 



RELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

the distribution of good literature, church papers for 
young and old, and the preaching of the Gospel of 
Christ to millions who are influenced but never en- 
roll as Church members. The spirit would not live 
long without the body. It would be difficult, yea, 
impossible, to maintain the Christian virtues without 
some agency, some organization to advocate and 
propagate them. It is a mistake of course, to make 
organization an end in itself as was the tendency of 
the Christian Church in certain periods of its history, 
but it is a far greater mistake to suppose that the 
religious life could be maintained without organiza- 
tion. How r ever imperfectly the Christian Church 
has performed its task, it is conceded to be the most 
remarkable institution known to man. "Here is an 
institution devoted avowedly to social idealism, to 
the remaking of human character and of human 
institutions themselves in conformity with the divine 
ideal. Whatever the faults of the church, surely no 
other human institution bears such witnesses, to the 
idealistic aspirations of mankind. It is not accident, 
therefore that many of the noblest, most aspiring, 
most unselfish spirits of our race have found their 
work in building up this institution." 1 



1 Charles A. Ellwood, the Reconstruction of Religion, p. 285. 



[132] 



BIBLICAL LEARNING 



"Freedom is recreated year by year 
In hearts wide open on the Godward side, 

In souls calm-cadenced as the whirling sphere, 
In minds that sway the future like a tide; 

No broadest creeds can hold her, and no codes ; 
She chooses men for her august abodes, 

Building them fair and fronting to the dawn." 

Lowell. 

The aim of real science, as well as true religion, is to 
know the truth confident that even unwelcome truth is 
better than cherished error, that the welfare of the human 
race depends upon the extension and diffusion of knowledge 
among men, and that the truth alone can make us free. 
Coriklin, — The Direction of Human Evolution. 

Thus it appears that Biblical Criticism is simply one of 
the sisterhood of modern science ; and surely when we under- 
stand her true mission, we shall feel that her presence is 
benign and shall rejoice to do her grateful and loving 
homage. 

Willard Chamberlain Selleck, 
"New Appreciation of the Bible/' 



CHAPTER XV 
Biblical Learning 

IT IS not assumed that all readers will agree with 
the positions set forth in this and in the following 
chapters. Our only effort in this chapter will be to 
call attention to certain changes and tendencies in 
our attitude toward the Bible which seem to indicate 
hope for the future. Neither is there in this dis- 
cussion any disposition to find fault with the con- 
servative element in the church of today. We are 
making no defense of radicalism, no plea for a new 
Bible or a new religion. There has always been in the 
church both a conservative and progressive element. 
This is as it should be. Often there are also two 
extreme wings — radical reactionaries and radical 
liberals. One hope of the future lies in the fact that 
neither »of these radical wings has won. The church 
is not safe without a wise, substantial, deeply spiritual, 
conservative element. This element has always proved 
a check against extreme liberalism on the one hand 
and cold rationalism on the other. It is only reac- 
tionary conservatism, that form that blocks the wheels 
of religious progress, against which we would care to 
lift a word of warning. Conservatism too often per- 
mits an over development of the defects of its own 
virtues — a mere clinging to the existing order of 
things with no effort to discriminate between the 

N5] 



KELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

worth-while and the outworn ; an aversion to change 
simply because it is change. It thus becomes a clog 
on the wheels of legitimate progress and prevents 
needed reforms and unconsciously perpetuates real 
evils. This phase of conservatism is pure bourbonism 
and accounts for much of the lack of progress, where 
we would naturally expect the church to go forward 
with an ever accelerated movement. To combat posi- 
tive evil is not the only task of the church, but it is 
often put under the necessity of carrying a dead 
weight of well meaning but mistaken conservatism. 

In reality it is the ultra conservatives who are our 
most confirmed and shall we say, our most dangerous 
skeptics, and they are none the less dangerous because 
their doubt is unconscious or at least unacknowledged. 
"To refuse to submit religious institutions and con- 
victions to the pitiless scrutiny and exacting estimate 
which everything else in the modern world is under- 
going, appears to arise from fears as to the results of 
such a trial a lurking doubt as to whether the church 
could meet the test that all other institutions are fac- 
ing. Such an attitude, far from revealing loyalty 
and faith, indicates the timidity and distrust which 
can maintain its convictions only by throwing about 
them an artificial protection. It is the unconscious 
skeptics who claim the special privileges of pious ac- 
quiescence for their beliefs; they must keep them 
unchallenged, wrapped in layers of devout obscurant- 
ism and vague sentiment, lest, if the outward sign of 
the spiritual life be altered, the inward grace itself 
should perish from the earth. 

[136] 



BIBLICAL LEARNING 

' ' Institutional religion is shot through and through 
with this subtle and corrosive skepticism which mas- 
querades under the name of faith and orthodoxy. If 
the Church perishes, it will be this type of 'faith', the 
sort of sinner who holds it, that will be chiefly respon- 
sible." 1 The church is rapidly breaking from this 
over caution, this artificial protection of the Bible. 
Reverent, though rigid criticism, has the right of way. 
It is not the results of modern Biblical criticism we 
wish to consider here, but its spirit — certain new 
tendencies, emphases and methods. 

Says McFadyen, "It can not be too strongly em- 
phasized that criticism does not stand for a definite 
set of results. It stands for a method, an attitude, 
a temper which patiently collects and impartially 
examines all available facts and allows them to make 
their own impression upon the mind of the investi- 
gator. Perhaps the danger of the present time is not 
that of a critical study of our Bible, so much as that 
of standing still, not that of the progressive who 
quickens a new interest in the Bible, as that of the 
ultra-conservative who perhaps silences a scientific 
study of the Bible. Biblical Criticism is simply a 
free and reverent study of all Biblical facts." 1 This 
freedom in the realm of Biblical research was not so 
cheerfully granted a generation ago, but we have 
come to see that Christianity could not long continue 
to advance, encumbered with a dogmatic insistance 
upon old and outworn Biblical interpretations for 
no higher reason than that they are old; or with a 



1 Fitch — "Can the Church Survive the Changing Order" — p. 77. 
See "Old Testament Criticism and the Christian Church" pages 
25, 30, 47. 

E'W] 



EELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

tenacious clinging to traditional views, merely because 
they are traditional. Neither could it long continue 
to progress under a mistrust of scholarship and with 
its eyes closed to the flood of new light that has been 
pouring in upon us from every source during these 
modern times. This attitude was one of the real 
dangers in the past, a danger that is now happily 
disappearing. 

It is readily granted that there were forms of 
Biblical criticism in Germany and elsewhere that gave 
the Church real concern. Its influence was destruc- 
tive, and no doubt it was designed to be. It was right 
that the church should combat such influences. There 
are many reasons why this criticism as developed in 
Germany during the nineteenth century could not be 
regarded as the final conclusion of scholarship. 1 It was 
wanting in the constructive element; its importance 
was so exaggerated that it developed into a form of 
scholasticism; much of it was irrelevant to the real 
issues at stake. Many of the sciences upon which the 
conclusions of these critics were based were not then 
sufficiently developed to render the work of synthetic 
scholarship of that age trustworthy. Modern scholars 
are now going over the work of the nineteenth cen- 
tury in a more reverent and thorough manner, and 
with far better tools to work with. "The desideratum 
for just thinking and conviction is that we should 
have both the steadfast and open mind. ' Prove (or 
try) all things' — that is the open mind. 'Hold fast 
that which is good' — that is the steadfast mind. 



??2 



1 See Sanday, "Inspiration" pp. 117 to 119, also Ellwood, "The 
Reconstruction of Religion" p. 154. 

2 Rev. R. 0. Gillie. Constructive Christianity. 



[*38] 



BIBLICAL LEARNING 



it 



We define criticism" says Henry S. Nash, "as that 
mental process in modern Christianity whereby the 
historic character, the true nature of divine revelation 
is appreciated and manifested. The historic spirit, 
the desire to know the whole past even as it was in 
itself, comes in as a noble servant raised up by God 
to help the church to truly know her Bible, and thus 
pay her debt to the Author of the Sacred Page. 
Christianity stands or falls with the Bible. For we 
believe our Scriptures to be the book of witness to 
the true quality of the ultimate religious experience, 
and to the character and being of God as revealed 
through that experience, the authentic record of the 
blessed promise and the saving presence of the perfect 
life on earth. The well-being of the church depends 
upon the right interpretation of the Bible. "We must 
seek to know it from within and along the lines of its 
own meaning and purpose, that this is our most 
sacred obligation." 2 Honest, conscientious, scientific 
and historic criticism of this sort has won the day. 
The helpfulness of its work is conceded. It has al- 
ready rendered a real service to Christianity, and 
given us a considerable body of results that will no 
doubt prove of permanent value. 

This new method and spirit, also much of its results, 
have been accepted during the last thirty or forty years 
by practically every author of note in all Protestant 
bodies. During this period there has been produced 
scarcely a single accredited commentary, Biblical dic- 
tionary, or religious text book which does not assume 



1 "The History of the Higher Criticism of the New Testament- 
p. 14-15. 



[139] 



RELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

this newer attitude. 1 Writers like the late Washington 
Gladden, Lyman Abbot, the late Borden P. Bowne, 
the late John Fiske, Charles E. Jefferson, Charles 
Foster Kent, and literally scores of others who were 
in sympathy with movement embodied its best spirit 
in popular religions magazines and books until at 
present large numbers in the Christian Church are 
more or less familiar with it. It now finds expression 
in our Sunday School helps and literature designed 
for the use of young people, in our denominational 
papers prepared for family reading, and in much if 
not most of our best modern preaching. In short 
what is called the New Biblical Learning is now quite 
well understood by many in our pews. Understanding 
it, they no longer dread or fear it. Whatever danger 
seemed to accompany this movement in the early 
stages, whatever crisis it seemed to create, has now 
virtually passed. Its better method, its open- 
mindedness, its kindly, progressive and reverent 
temper, its emphasis upon the spirit rather than upon 
the letter promise better things for the near future. 

There are still those, of course, who would advocate 
the old order. But their voice is not dominant. Most 
church people now realize that it was not the Bible 
that was endangered, but simply certain concepts 
about the Bible. It is very easy for devout, well 
meaning people to fall into the delusion — and the love 
for and devotion to the Bible often strengthen this 



1 "It is impossible to resist the impresson that the critical 
argument is in the stronger hands, and that it is accompanied by a 
far greater command of the materials. The cause of criticism is, 
it is difficult to doubt, the winning cause." Sanday — "Inspiration" 
p. 116. 

[I 4 0] 



BIBLICAL LEARNING 

delusion — of substituting traditional views about the 
Bible for the Bible itself. Anything, therefore, con- 
trary to their interpretation even though that inter- 
pretation rested chiefly on tradition, or even though 
they were unaware of what it did rest upon, seems to 
them to overthrow the Book itself. 

Our conceptions, our theories, our systems in regard 
to truth and reality — if human knowledge is advanc- 
ing — necessarily change. But reality is permanent. 
The science of biology — of life >. — is new, but life is 
old. Geology, the science about the earth, changes, 
but the earth with its rocks and mountains is per- 
manent. Our theories about light- — the adaptations 
and uses of it — change with advancing ages, but the 
sun continues to shine with an unbroken light. Our 
theories and interpretations of the Bible change, but 
the Bible itself — its spirit, truth, and influence — 
these remain the permanent possession of mankind 
and no artificial support will increase their value. 

We have come to see with Fairbairn that ' l Criticism 
is but a name for scientific scholarship scientifically 
used. Grant such scholarship legitimate, and the 
legitimacy of its use to all fit subjects must also be 
granted. Nobody denies, nobody even doubts, the legit- 
imacy of its application to classical and ethical liter- 
ature, the necessity or excellency of the work it has 
done, or where the material allowed it, the accuracy of 
the work achieved — now the Scriptures either are 
or are not fit subjects for scholarship. If they are 
not, then all sacred scholarship has been and still is 
a mistake, and they are in a body of literature pos- 

[141] 



RELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

sessed of the inglorious distinction of being incapable 
of being understood. ' ' Our newer and better attitude 
does not break with scholarship. It only asks that 
scholarship shall be reverent, sufficiently in sympathy 
with and appreciative of the purpose of this Book of 
Books to enable it to reach fair and unbiased conclu- 
sion. Irreverent scholarship can not understand the 
Bible much less give an unbiased interpretation of it. 
The Bible must be spiritually, as well as intellectually, 
discerned. 

"The new Biblical learning has simply committed 
itself, reverently and fearlessly, to the guidance of 
the spirit in the use of the instruments of modern 
scholarship in its search for truth. It prefers the 
religion of the spirit to the religion of authority. It 
maintains the liberty of the spirit as against the 
bondage of the letter. It follows the spirit of truth 
even to the defiance of tradition. . . .It claims for the 
twentieth century the freedom of the Reformation, 
and it prophesies for the twentieth century the illu- 
mination of a new Pentecost. Its emphasis upon the 
essential elements of the faith is far more command- 
ing than the former hangings of the whole faith upon 
things indifferent. So implicit faith in truth and the 
incessant search for truth are far more promising than 
any passive contentment with possible error. Its abso- 
lute surrender to the spirit's guidance will mean more 
rapid progress in Biblical knowledge in the coming 
century than even the last century has seen." 1 This 
sort of criticism has not only immensely enriched the 



1 Doremus Almy Hayes. "The New Age and its Creed." — p. 37. 

[142] 



BIBLICAL LEARNING 

Bible, it has given the church a new confidence in 
the Bible. She has come to see that it can stand criti- 
cism ; that the Bible does not so much need defending, 
as it needs to be given a chance ; that it simply needs 
to be approached in a frank, open, reverent state of 
mind, and that the message it speaks to such minds 
needs to be followed, needs to be fearlessly lived. 

Modern Biblical learning has not only emancipated 
us as from the bondage of the letter and committed us 
to the guidance of the spirit — it has set forth in bold 
relief the one great figure — the life and personality 
of Christ. It regards scriptural passages important 
largely in the measure that they relate to Him and 
reveal Him. The Bible is a portrait — Biblical learn- 
ing is causing the face of Christ to shine brighter 
and brighter with each passing age — tender, pure, 
divine, appealing and inspiring. It is enabling us 
more and more to see the world's Savior face to face. 
It is not a call "Back to Christ," but it is leading us 
onward and upward to a more thorough appreciation 
of Him, his spirit, his teaching, his method of working 
with and of saving men. 

This emancipation from the bondage of the letter, 
this reliance upon the spirit, this larger freedom of 
personal judgment, this forward instead of the back- 
ward look, this reverent openmindedness, this larger 
emphasis upon the teaching, the life, the personality 
of Christ — all point in the right direction. A door 
has been opened to freedom and investigation of 
thought. A friendship with reverent scholarship has 
been formed that promises to be lasting, and unem- 
barassed progress is the promise of the future. 

[143] 



MODERN THEOLOGY 



"The old order changeth, yielding place to new 
And God fulfills himself in many ways." 

"Let knowledge grow from more to more 
But more of reverence in us dwell ; 
That mind and soul according well, 
May make one music as before 
But vaster." 

"The present day theology, then, is simply the explana- 
tion which men are giving of religious truth in the light of 
this century. Increasing knowledge of the world, and of 
ourselves and of the Bible call for new explanation of 
the facts of religion. New light is always breaking forth; 
we see these great themes in the new light and discover that 
our former theories of them need to be reshaped. This has 
been true in all the ages of the world, and it will always 
be true. God is always making all things new in the order 
of nature, and therefore, in the world of theory, old things 
are passing away and all things are becoming new." 

— Washington Gladden, 
Present Day Theology, p. 8. 



CHAPTER XVI 

Modern Theology 

~1VT~0 EFFORT will here be made to pass critical 
J^ judgment on modern theology. "We desire only 
to call attention to a certain freedom and trend in 
present day religious thought, and certain changes, 
and new emphases in regard to religious life and 
character that to us seem to indicate hope for the 
future. 

Just as it was necessary to liberate Biblical study 
from the bondage of the letter, it was necessary that 
theology should be emancipated from the bondage of 
dogmatism, superstition, and bigotry; that, if rever- 
ent, theologians should be free to think and to declare 
their conclusions. Christianity could not go forward 
with a non-progressive, moribund theology. 

Here again it is not so much the body of formulated 
results, but the spirit, method, and emphasis that are 
fraught with promise. In regard to the newer theo- 
logy, little more than the critical work has been done. 
Old systems have been opened and critically reviewed 
and at least a door has been left open for the admit- 
tance of new light. Constructive work has not ad- 
vanced far. A better method has been adopted, some 
material gathered, and the work on the new volume 
has started in the right spirit. Little more than the 
introduction, however, has been written. A general 

[145] 



KELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

survey of the field to be covered has been made and 
certain chapters suggested. Furthermore, the work 
can now proceed with far less annoyance and opposi- 
tion than would have beset such an undertaking a 
generation ago. It is not designed that this new 
volume shall ever be completed, thus leaving it pos- 
sible to add new chapters from age to age as the race 
advances in the knowledge of truth. 

The new theology up to date, therefore, is but "A 
movement, not a system; an atmosphere, not a creed; 
a method, not an attainment; an emphasis, not a 
dogma; a tendency or rather a group of tendencies; 
a phenomenon, or rather a series of phenomena ; it is 
a spirit, an accent, an intonation, a view point, a 
vision, and not any thing that can be measured or 
statistically defined." 1 Yet it is just in this new 
spirit, method and vision that we see larger hope for 
the future. 

The old theology was too dogmatic. She knew too 
much, especially outside her own realm, and knew it 
too certainly. She not only knew the year of creation, 
but the time of year, the day and the time of day. 
1 Her foible has been omniscience. ' She seemed to feel 
that her own work was complete, and assumed to 
dictate the method and material for other sciences, or 
at least to sit in judgment on their findings. Boastful 
of possessing the truth once for all delivered to the 
saints, she was impatient with new facts, intolerant 
of new views, distrustful of new truth, suspicious of 



1 Charles Edward Jefferson — "The New Age and Its Creed." 
p. 96. 



[i 4 6] 



MODERN THEOLOGY 

scholarship in other realms than her own. She would 
have been entirely content merely to have preserved 
inviolate the system of the fathers, rather than to 
have been put to the pains of making progress be- 
yond that of the fathers. 

But theology in these modern times has become 
less afraid of new facts, and more friendly to the 
scientific spirit. Theology is the science of religion. 
She has been regarded as the queen of sciences. 
Science necessarily changes with the progress of know- 
ledge. There may, therefore, be a new theology with- 
out a new religion, and without breaking from the 
truth and reality found in the Bible. God, Christ, the 
nature of sin, the necessity of repentance, divine grace, 
the fact of regeneration, and the reality of God's 
love — all these stand from generation to generation. 
"There is as little danger of undermining religion 
by a new theology as there is of blotting out the stars 
by a new Astronomy." 1 If theology is in reality a 
science, she must be subject to change, she must be- 
come friendly to new facts and new truth. 

We have come to see that religion as well as science 
needs something of the empirical spirit. It would 
be strange, indeed, if in every study but one, we are 
compelled to observe facts and follow the inductive 
method, but in the study of religion we should be 
content to listen only to the voice of the past, and to 
shut our eyes to new light. This method belongs 
distinctly to a past age. He who insists on following 
it "is a belated straggler, who in reality belongs to the 



1 Lyman Abbot — "Theology of an Evolutionist." p. 3. 

[147] 



KELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

twelfth century, but who in some mysterious way, 
has slipped into the company of modern thinkers, not 
understanding where he is." 1 

This unyielding, dogmatic temper of the older 
theology, relying chiefly on authority, came well nigh 
alienating the intellectual and educated classes from 
the church. Lovers of knowledge, the intellectually 
alert were not only eager, they were determined to 
know what was going on in the realm of scholarship. 
Many in the church on the other hand seemed to as- 
sume that ignorance of what was going on among 
scholars, among the thinkers of the world, was the 
only safe course for the church to follow. The old 
saying that * ignorance is the mother of devotion ' 
betrays this attitude of the past. Many well meaning 
ministers hesitated to discuss with the laity the 
findings of scholars in realms of religion. An over 
conservative theology heckled, found fault with many 
of the finest teachers in our colleges ; and on the first 
sign of the appearance of these newer findings in 
popular religious literature, cried out against the 
writers as purveyors of heresy. High school and col- 
lege students were given cause to feel that they were 
compelled to choose between the church with its old 
cautious attitude toward modern learning and with 
its medieval concepts of the universe, and the scien- 
tific interpretation of the world about us. Young 
people by the hundreds were giving up their Bibles 
and the church, not realizing that they could walk 



1 Charles Edward Jefferson — "The New Age and Its Creed." 
p. 98. 



[i 4 8] 



MODERN THEOLOGY 

with both Christ and science. Well equipped and 
devoted ministers suspected of favoring a progres- 
sive theology were marked as dangerous, or con- 
demned with faint praise and their influence damaged. 
This is not to say that there was no fault on the part 
■of science or scientist, — there was ; but we, here, are 
simply tracing a change of attitude in theology and 
the temper of the church. 

It would be too much to affirm that all this is past, 
but the crisis is past. Theology has become more 
humble, more willing to heed the voice. "Except ye 
become as little children ye can not enter." The 
temper of the church has become more reasonable, 
more tolerant, less irritating. Progressives are in the 
ascendency. In all the recent church conventions 
whether in the home or foreign field, whether in the 
International Sunday School Convention or those of 
the Presbyterians or Baptist — undue controversy 
was easily silenced and reactionary forces were out- 
voted. The interests centered not about creed, but 
about religious activities and the great world tasks. 
Not radicals, but men with open minds and the for- 
ward look, devout men of progressive temperament 
of thought as well as of action held the reins of 
larger influence. There could not be real progress 
under reactionary leadership. 

In the not distant past it was thought that this 
progressive attitude in theology was detrimental to 
spirituality, especially to evangelistic zeal and suc- 
cess. But that position can not now be successfully 
defended. Hundreds of men progressive in theology 

[ J 49] 



KELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

have manifested real passion in revival work and 
have enjoyed phenomenal success in 'soul winning. ' 

Hugh Price Hughes was progressive, but zealously 
evangelistic. It was said of him, "That he recalled 
our early fervor and enthusiasm for the souls of men 
and brought us in touch with contemporary life and 
the great movement of the time." Henry Drummond 
was progressive in Theology — a teacher of science 
and an earnest advocate and great expounder of the 
doctrine of evolution, but he possessed so great zeal 
for evangelistic work that he became a co-worker with 
Dwight L. Moody in his great revival campaigns. 
The late Bishop Bashford was one of the greatest 
missionary statesmen of the Methodist Church, an 
earnest advocate of the doctrine of sanctification, and 
passionately evangelistic. But he was progressive in 
theology. Indeed, as the newer theological spirit and 
method have found expression in the pulpit, the 
religious press, and Sunday School literature, some- 
what in the same measure has the church made its 
greatest gains in membership, greatest increase in 
Sunday School interest and attendance, greatest ad- 
vance on the foreign field, and has had the courage 
to formulate its greatest programs and launch its 
greatest campaigns for immediate future activities. 
It is, of course, too much to claim all this as a result 
of a new spirit and method in theology, but it is cer- 
tainly quite within the bounds of truth to affirm that 
this progressive attitude has in no sense blocked the 
onward movements of Christianity, and that the fine 
achievements of the past two decades could not have 

[150] 



MODERN THEOLOGY 

been made with the dead hand of a non-progressive, 
dogmatic theology weighing heavily upon the Church. 
"A religion which is adapted to the requirements of 
modern life must first of all be adjusted to modern 
science. A religion which is not in harmony with 
modern science can not possibly remain the religion 
of the thinking class of the future." 1 

The newer theology, of course, gives far greater 
consideration to the social aspects of Christianity. 
It will build upon social science as well as upon the 
Bible. The older theology was so deeply interested 
in divinity that it came dangerously near overlooking 
humanity, especially humanity's social needs and re- 
lations. H. G. Wells is correct in saying "that by the 
fourth century we find all the Christian communities 
so agitated and exasperated by tortuous and elusive 
arguments about the nature of God as to be largely 
negligent of the simpler teachings of charity, service 
and brotherhood that Jesus inculcated. ' ' This pecul- 
iar emphasis upon creed and theology continued until 
late into the nineteenth century. Out of it we have 
inherited two hundred more or less Protestant sects 
and denominations. Not ceasing to stress the first 
great commandment, God and our love for Him, our 
newer theology gives greater emphasis to the second 
— our neighbor and our love for him. Not ceasing 
to concern itself about the Bible and the supernatural, 
it gathers also freely from psychology, anthropology, 
biology, comparative religion, sociology and history. 
The newer theology will make room for a spiritual 



1 Charles A. Ellwood, The Reconstruction of Religion, p. 3. 

[I5i] 



EELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

biology. It will become less coldly logical and meta- 
physical, less of Paul and more of Christ who de- 
clared "I am the way, the truth and the life," and 
am come "that ye might have life and might have it 
more abundantly .' ' 

We repeat, it is not so much in what modern 
theology has achieved toward completing a new sys- 
tem, but in her spirit, method and forward look 
there is hope for the future. "We find ground for op- 
timism in that the Church has the courage to change 
her opinions, is willing more largely to use the scien- 
tific method, in that without breaking from the truth 
as it is found in the scriptures she is more willing 
to recognize facts and reality wherever found, in that 
she has discovered that, in the last analysis, the 
highest loyalty to Christ is unflinching loyalty to the 
truth. 



[152] 



OTHER TENDENCIES 



"Today, we are in the midst of a religious revolution, 
which is going on so quietly that many do not notice it, 
although it is a greater and more fundamental revolution 
than any since the early years of the Christian era. We 
are witnessing great changes in the attitude of the churches 
on questions of faith and science. The spirit of science 
has entered into religion." 

— E. G. Conklin, 
"The Direction of Human Evolution/ 9 

"We are the witnesses of the collapse of a finished epoch ; 
the new generation is already at work, in many unrelated, 
apparently conflicting ways, at the building of another — 
even as we read, a new world is coming up in sombre dawn." 

— Fitch, 
"Can the Church Survive in the Changing Or&erV 



CHAPTER XVII 

Other Tendencies 

IN THIS chapter, we desire in a loose-handed way 
to call attention to a number of tendencies, all of 
which we think are of a trend to inspire optimism. 

Since theology is the science of religion, it may not 
be out of place to speak a word here in regard to the 
relation of theology and science in general. Ministers 
now in middle life have had an opportunity to witness 
three acts in a drama that might have resulted in 
real tragedy. As young men, we were reading about 
the warfare of science and theology. A little later we 
were reading books on the reconciliation of science 
and theology. We are now reading about the co- 
operation of science and theology. These changes are 
very significant. What tragedy would have resulted 
had this unnatural warfare of the past with all its 
bitterness continued, and there had resulted a con- 
stant conflict between the faith of the heart and the 
integrity of the head. Whatever conflict may have 
existed was simply between bad science on the one 
hand, and equally bad theology on the other. We 
have come to see that there can be no more real con- 
flict between the final findings of science and theology 
than that truth can be in conflict with itself. The 
passing of this old warfare is a positive gain to the 
church, as it is also to science. 

[155] 



OTHER TENDENCIES 

Science has not hesitated to change. Abraham-like, 
it has not hesitated to sacrifice the "dearest children 
of its own thought.' ' In this particular, at least, 
science has been more courageous than the older 
theology. The church has had its saints and martyrs 
— dauntless souls who have cheerfully died for their 
faith. "Our age has also its saints and martyrs- — 
heroes who not only face death for their faith, but 
who can scrap their faith when facts have proved it 
wrong. This, indeed, is courage, and therein lies 
hope." 1 Science has spent little time in heresy hunt- 
ing or in heresy trials. Theology in the past was 
wanting at this point. Her spirit of inquisition in 
the past does not make pleasant reading. "Where we 
should expect tolerance she was intolerant. She was 
reluctant to drop worn-out and false views even after 
they were proved false. She was slow to drop the 
Ptolemaic for the Copernican theory of astronomy, 
slow to scrap Ussher's System of Chronology in 
the face of all the findings of Geology and Anthrop- 
ology, slow to break from the guidance of the letter, 
to that of the spirit in Biblical interpretation. To be 
sure, the church is under no obligation to follow every 
beck and turn of " science-so-called/ ' nor the latest 
wind that blows in modern thought. To run after 
every new doctrine because it is new, would be as fatal 
as to eschew the new, simply because it is new, and 
even more fatal than to cling to the old because it is 
old. But the church has finally learned that she, 
too, can change, and in many particulars is also learn- 

1 Lothrop Stoddard — "The Revolts against Civilization" — p. 85. 



OTHER TENDENCIES 

ing the wisdom of letting the "dead past bury its 
dead." 

Furthermore, it was not long since that the church 
held a concept of faith that was largely incompatible 
with reason. We often speak of blind faith. Faith 
is not blind. Faith, at least in one of its important 
aspects, is simply reason consulting the experience 
of the past and all available knowledge and then 
launching into the unknown in the direction that 
present knowledge and past experience point. Eeason 
falters, faith dares; reason keeps safely within the 
known, faith ventures and tries the unknown, but she 
ventures in the direction reason indicates. Faith is 
more than reason, but it is not unreasonable. In the 
past, the church has feared, and rightly too, a ration- 
alism with faith and religion left out. The modern 
church has come to see that there is danger in a faith, 
a religion with reason left out. Eeason as well as 
faith has its rights. The church has not lost faith. 
It is simply making greater use of reason and this is 
a step, we think, in the right direction. "The ages 
of irrational faith, we may hope, are past or passing ; 
but the age of a rational and understanding faith is 
still ahead. We need the maximum of faith, not the 
minimum; but it must be a faith built upon facts." 1 

Many writers are insisting that the sanctions of 
the Christian religion are not as strong as in earlier 
days. " There was," says H. G. Wells, "a loss of 
faith after 1859. The true gold of religion was in 



1 Charles A. Ellwood — "The Reconstruction of Religion" — p. 31. 

[157] 



KELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

many cases thrown away with the worn-out purse that 
contained it and it was not recovered. . . . The seven- 
teenth century kings, owners, rulers and lead- 
ers had had the idea at the back of their minds 
that they prevailed by the will of God; they really 
feared him, they got priests to put things right for 
them with him. When they were wicked, they tried 
not to think of him. But the old faith of kings, owners, 
and rulers of the opening twentieth century had 
faded under the actinic light of scientific criticisms." 1 
Bertrand Eussell thinks: "The influence of the 
Christian religion on daily life has decayed very 
rapidly throughout Europe the last hundred years ;" 
and Professor Ellwood says: "Not only have re- 
ligious beliefs and values changed but they have been 
immensely weakened.' ' This is partially true, but it 
is not all loss. The old sanctions were largely those 
of fear and superstition. They were the sanctions 
of the policeman's club. What the Christian religion 
has lost in this direction it has gained and will con- 
tinue to gain in wholesomeness. The Christian re- 
ligion is more and more substituting the sanctions of 
science for superstition; of well tested truth for tra- 
dition; of reason, not for faith, but for irrational 
faith; of love for fear; of a desire to serve one's 
age for that of an individualistic salvation which 
often meant but little more than an escape from 
future punishment. The sanction, the incentive in 
religion today is largely that of a finer devotion to the 



1 Outline of History — p. 957. The single volume. 

[138] 



OTHER TENDENCIES 

welfare of our fellowman growing out of a love of 
God as the common Father of us all. 

Much of the common complaint to the effect that 
the Church has lost its old time power, has in mind 
the loss of the old time manifestations of emotion and 
ecstacy. The demand of this age, with the passion 
and hate that characterize certain classes, along with 
the wear and tear of our industrial life, is not for an 
emotional religion. Social conditions today demand a 
religion of the cool head as well as of the warm heart ; 
a religion the fruits of which are gentleness, long- 
suffering, goodness, love, joy, peace, self-control; in 
short, of the tender sympathy and calm, unshakable 
repose of spirit that characterized Christ as he minis- 
tered midst the stress, passion and hate of his day. 
The absence of the old time emotionalism, however 
well it served its day, may be a mark of the whole- 
someness of the religion that is striving to minister to 
our day. "Of emotional Christianity, the world has 
had enough, and has proved its utter inadequacy, 
except when it is accompanied by a thorough compre- 
hension and radical acceptance of Christianity's 
Leader." 1 

The modern trend toward union among the 
churches is a hopeful sign. In the past, it looked as 
if Protestantism might deteriorate into a "mere 
huddle of sects, divided over lilliputian matters"- — 
eighteen bodies of Methodists, eighteen of Baptists, 
sixteen of Mennonites, twelve of Presbyterians, some 
two hundred sects and denominations in all, spending 



1 Charles A. Ellwood — "Reconstruction, of Religion*' — p. 152. 

[159] 



KELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

their energies, in the not distant past, in sectarian 
bitterness and strife. Milton rightly characterized 
that condition as "the fantastic terrors of sects and 
schisms." We still have the divisions as an inheri- 
tance of the past, but the strife and bitterness is 
subsiding. The divisive spirit has largely past. The 
tide has turned. "While certain denominations are 
exercised a bit over the fundamentalist movement, 
on the other hand, every week brings news of overtures 
of union. Instead of bitterness there has sprung up 
respect and good will. Instead of strife there is 
friendship. "Instead of the thorn there has come 
up the fir tree and instead of the briar has come up 
the myrtle tree." Mutual understanding has been 
reached in regard to work in the foreign field, and 
spheres of influence and activity have been agreed 
upon. Co-operative enterprises are undertaken in 
maintaining Christian colleges, and in the support of 
student pastors at State Universities. This is not to 
say there will be no divisions in the future. It is to 
say that the psychological attitude has been reversed. 
We are looking in the right direction. In a recent 
convention of the churches in China, the tendency 
was to igore the things that divide Christianity of 
the Western world, and to unite in a Chinese Christian 
church. 

Witness the Council of the federated Churches of 
Christ in America through which some thirty-five de- 
nominations and 100,000 ministers and 20,000,000 
members all acknowledge the Deity and Lordship of 
Christ, and are working hand in hand for the redemp- 

[160] 



OTHER TENDENCIES 

tion of men. There has sprung up in these recent 
years a fine spirit of good will and co-operation among 
the different religious denominations. 

It is generally recognized that we are passing 
through a transitional period that amounts virtually 
to a revolution — changes in industry, transportation, 
business, politics, government, science and philos- 
ophy. It would be strange indeed if there were not 
changes in the forms of religious thought, and in the 
programs for religious activity. The question is re- 
peatedly asked, "Can the church survive this chang- 
ing order; can she meet the tremendous demands of 
the age V 7 It should be remembered in a progressive 
civilization, every age involves a crisis, not only for 
the church but for all existing institutions. The 
demands upon Christianity in our present crisis are 
relatively no greater, the test relatively no severer 
than during the apostolic age, the age of Savonarola, 
of Luther, or of Wesley. Besides, periods of transi- 
tion are fraught with opportunity as well as with 
danger. It is the breaking up period that brings the 
greater danger. We have fairly well survived that 
phase of the transition. "When human nature is 
most uncertain of itself, it is most easily influenced. 
Where conviction is wanting, persuasion has its op- 
portunity. A restless age is a plastic age. The mood 
of our times has surrendered to neither good nor evil ; 
it presents each with an opportunity for conquest. 
While it is yet pliable, neither the good nor the evil 
has the advantage over the other. 1 Our age is restless 



1 John William Fraser — "The Untried Civilization." — p. 56. 

[:6i] 



RELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

and pliable. The opportunity for religions recon- 
struction is before the church. Professor Elhrood 
states the situation well in the following question and 
answer: "What is to be the end of the religious revo- 
lution? Is it to end in the negation of religion and, 
possibly, of idealistic morality? 

"Before any one draws such a pessimistic con- 
clusion, it would be well to remember that while the 
dangers of serious reversion are great in any period 
of social transition, and revolution, yet they are not 
insurmountable, and if met by rational intelligence, 
they will probably be overcome and a higher stage of 
development ushered in. Human history indeed gives 
us every encouragement to believe that this will be 
the result in the present crisis. ' ' 



[162] 



FACING FACTS 



"Truth crushed to earth shall rise again — 
The Eternal years of God are hers, 
But error, wounded, writhes in pain, 
And dies among his worshippers." 

Bryant. 

"Intelligent and brave men are not dismayed by danger. 
The good citizen sees in the perils that threaten society 
only occasions for more active effort, more earnest thought, 
and more unselfish devotion to duty." 

Giddings, — "Elements of Sociology " 

"The church universal with all its confusion is our in- 
heritance, and its confusions are a part of our inheritance; 
and if instead of rejecting the church because of its con- 
fusions, we study these, we are likely to find certain aspects 
of order emerge; in the midst of disorder some things will 
stand out clearly. For instance, in every age and land, what- 
ever its confusion, the great Christian Community has had 
the gift of producing a higher and greater type of character 
and such a type surely implies an unexpected unity." 

— F. R. Grover, 
The Nature and Purpose of Christian Society. 



CHAPTER XVIII 
Facing Facts 

IT would be easy, ostrich-fashion, to bury our 
heads in the sands of the pleasant facts of our 
Christian civilization only, and refuse to recognize 
certain very distressing phases of our modern life. 
Divorces, juvenile delinquency and crime in general 
are, no doubt, on the increase. Raymond B. Fosdick, 
in his American Police System gives ample facts 
concerning the amount of crime in this country com- 
pared with that in European countries, and the com- 
parison is by no means flattering to America. He 
places much of the blame on our police system. To 
be sure, since the war, crime has been so featured by 
our newspapers as to leave a distorted view of real 
conditions. Crime has been represented as a wave, 
and as if we are on the crest of that wave. But these 
outbreaks of social disorder perhaps represent not so 
much a wave, as they do a rather constant current that 
flows down through our American life. It must be 
admitted that it is a rather wide and deep current. 

Before the World War was thought of, the Literary 
Digest, under the caption, "The Helpless Police," 
gave some rather startling facts in regard to the preva- 
lence and cost of crime. The figures are given for 
1908, and by a conspicuous diagram, point out for 
that year: 

[x65] 



KELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

Value of wool $298,000,000 

Value of coal 350,000,000 

Value of wheat 735,000,000 

National Debt 964,000,000 

Annual cost of crime 1,373,000,000 

and then, somewhat in keeping with Mr. Fosdick's 
complaint, asks: "Do these facts, — when offset 
against our two convictions in every one hundred mur- 
ders — explain why our lawlessness is increasing, 
why we have more homicides every year than Italy, 
Austria, France, Belgium, England, Ireland, Scot- 
land, Spain, Hungary, Holland and Germany com- 
bined ? ' ' Much of our after- war lawlessness is freely 
conceded to be due to the lapse in morals, that, as 
shown by history, is a regular consequence of war. 
May not some of this lawlessness be due to a deeper 
cause? New forces, though in the end beneficial, 
often are the cause of real disturbances. 

The approach of spring, by the breaking up of 
ice, and freshets from melting snow often cause in- 
convenience and real damage. The growing sense of 
democracy is susceptible to certain abuses. Liberty, 
to many, means license. Lawlessness at times is but 
a surface indication, lamentable to be sure, of the 
working of a principle that in itself is good. It is a 
paradox we know, but in this sense, increased crime 
may be a sign of increasing good. 

When a student in college, I had a very fine in- 
structor who later became the sainted Bishop Bash- 
ford. It was during that period when, in religious 
circles, there was considerable concern over the 

[166] 



FACING FACTS 

theory of evolution lest it should endanger or over- 
throw our old faith. Dr. Bashford was an " evolu- 
tionist" and wisely tried to guide his students from 
the old theory to the new without a complete break 
in their Christian moorings. He used to impress 
upon us that in the evolution of the Christian King- 
dom, while the Kingdom of Christ may be growing 
better and larger, the Kingdom of darkness might 
grow the more intensely wicked, until in time a gulf 
between the two kingdoms might become fixed. Can 
it be that this, in a measure, is what we are now wit- 
nessing ? 

There is a significant passage also in the teachings 
of Christ : ' ' Think not that I come to send peace on 
the earth: I come not to send peace, but a sword, 
for I am come to set a man at variance against his 
father, and the daughter against her mother, and the 
daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. ' J This 
clearly sets forth the disturbing nature of even a 
benevolent principle — the confusion that accom- 
panies a transition: — that may precede a larger and 
better epoch. Apply this to the increase of juvenile 
crime and divorce. In a measure, at least, these grow- 
ing irregularities may be the surface indication that 
the Kingdom of Christ is advancing. 

The gradual emancipation and crowning of the 
child under the influence of Christianity, is a long 
and interesting story — far too long to narrate here 
in anything like detail. The power of life and death 
of the father over the son in Roman civilization was 
by no means a mere legal fiction. Three different 

[167] 



EELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

Bomans of position — Cassius, Scarus, and Fulvius 
— are mentioned by Valerius Maximus as having 
been executed by their fathers and another son was 
banished by his father. * The right of a father to sell 
his son in case of great need and poverty was fully 
recognized. The revolting and inhuman practice of 
exposure or abandonment of children of the poor, 
and of female and defective children of the rich, was 
common. Many of course perished from exposure, 
or were torn to pieces by wild beasts, but the girls 
were often picked up to be reared for immoral pur- 
poses and the defectives to be exhibited for gain. 
Parental tyranny even in the most private matters of 
the family persisted well into the Christian era. 

In early American life we had the patriarchal fam- 
ily. The old Puritan tradition of work also sanc- 
tioned child labor, and even leading statesmen looked 
upon the coming of "the Mill" as a blessing to 
furnish employment to the idle youth. Family tra- 
ditions and ideals in favor of child labor, as well as 
the greed on the part of manufacturers, made it 
easy to put both women and children in our mills. 
As a natural outgrowth, the American factories were 
manned for a time almost entirely by women and 
children. Certain European immigrants particularly 
laid the emphasis on family labor and thrift. Parents 
were interested in children for their economic value. 
"On the birth of a son, they exulted in the gift of 
a plough-man or waggoner; and on the birth of a 
daughter they rejoiced in the addition of another 



1 Gesta Christi, 0. L. Brace, p. 10. 

[i68] 



FACING FACTS 

spinster or milkmaid to the family." 1 This family 
system of labor, and the view that children might 
be an advantage for industry and gain, still persists 
in the cotton mills of the south, and recent decisions 
of the Supreme Court would seem to render us help- 
less to remedy the situation by federal law. In the 
very recent past, therefore children were found in 
the shops. This age has put the child in the school. 
Tomorrow, with our perfected Sunday School, we 
shall put the child not in the shop, — there untimely 
to waste its energies of body and mind, — but in both 
the school and the Church where, in keeping with 
divine economy, it belongs; and this promises to cor- 
rect much of our juvenile irregularity. It is signifi- 
cant that even now the Sunday School enrollment of 
our country surpasses that of our public school en- 
rollment. But the improved Sunday School of the 
future must do better work in building character. 
What other age found its children in both the school 
and church? 

There is little any longer in common between the 
home of modern life and that of colonial times. This 
transition was gradually going on during the early 
period of our national history. Since the Civil War, 
the change has been made complete. This new spirit 
of tolerance and freedom which now prevails in the 
home, has had its bad as well as its good effect. While 
we can now boast of the bright, free children that 
grace our American life, this freedom on the other 
hand easily gave rise to youthful precocity, dis- 



1 See " Introduction to Social Ethics" — by Mecklin, p. 229. 

[169] 



EELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

obedience and juvenile delinquency. 1 The past 
crowned the supposedly great and mighty. This age 
is fast dispensing with such crowned dignitaries. With 
greater wisdom and in keeping with the Christ ex- 
ample, we crown the child. Such a revolution, of 
course, could not be effected without certain regret- 
table disorders. While these transitions cost, they 
are worth while. "The greater the rate of progress 
the heavier does the cost become ; the faster the march, 
the larger is the number of the exhausted who fall by 
the way. Progress like any other form of motion in 
the Universe, starts reactions against itself." 1 To a 
certain extent, juvinile delinquencies, therefore, may 
indicate progress. 

Equally interesting is the gradual evolution of the 
modern woman under the elevating influence of 
Christianity. This story also is too long to narrate 
in these pages. Women today have been granted suf- 
frage in something like twenty-five different countries 
and provinces. They have finally come to their own 
industrially, socially, politically. But with this new 
freedom, and no doubt, partly because of it, divorces 
are on the increase. 

Few things are more alarming in our modern civil- 
ization than this growing menace to the integrity of 
family life. Statistics indicate that "in 1885 the 
United States had 23,472 divorces, while all other 
Christian countries had 20,131. In 1905, the figures 
were 68,000 to 40,000, the United States leading the 



1 See Mecklin. Introduction to Social Ethics, p. 236. 
1 Giddings, Elements of Sociology, p. 318. 



[170] 



FACING FACTS 

rest of Christendom by 28,000 divorces. During the 
decade from 1890 to 1900, divorces increased in this 
country sixty-six and six-tenths per cent, or more 
than three times the increase in population. By 1906 
the proportion of divorces to marriages was approxi- 
mately one to thirteen and nine tenths. If the pres- 
ent rate of increase of divorces continues, it has been 
estimated that by the end of the century, more than 
half of all marriages will end in divorce/' 1 Since 
1916 the divorce rate in the United States exceeds 
that of Japan, which had previously had the highest 
rate of any great civilized nation. A glance at the 
following table will indicate the growth of this evil : 

Divorces by Years 



1901.... 61,698 




1911.... 94,622 


1902.... 62,108 




1912.... 100,927 


1903.... 65,263 




1913.... 106,053 


1904.... 67,086 




1914.... 110,759 


1905.... 68,901 




1915.... 115,879 


1906.... 72,786 




1916.... 114,036 


1907.... 77,636 




1917.... 120,243 


1908.... 81,579 




1918.... 124,928 


1909.... 85,199 




1919.... 129,496 


1910.... 91,638 




1920.... 132,753 


The decade, 


1900-1910 


, 733,894 


The decade, 


1911-1920 


, 1,149,696 



Total in 20 years 1,883,590 



1 Mecklin — Introduction to Social Ethics. 

2 Six counties have had more divorces than marriages : Pawnee, 
Okla.; Washoe, Nev. ; Trinity, Calif.; Ruthford, Tenn. ; Union, 
Oregon; Clackamas, Oregon. 



[I7i] 



EELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

Divorced persons 3,767,182 

Minor children named in divorce 
decrees 1,318,696 

Adult children affected 500,000 
The worst offenders are Montana, Oklahoma, In- 
diana, Arizona, California, Wyoming, with one di- 
vorce in six marriages; Idaho, and Washington with 
one in five; Oregon with one in two and five-tenths; 
Nevada "reaching the apex of national infamy " with 
a ratio of one divorce to one and five tenths 
marriages. 1 

There are, no doubt, many factors that enter this 
problem. Perhaps the two largest are the economic 
and the moral. The economic includes unemploy- 
ment, low wages, a feeling of inability to support a 
family. The moral includes desertion, cruelty, 
adultery, and drunkenness. It is held that these 
moral causes constitute ninety-seven per cent of di- 
vorces. The prohibition law is rapidly correcting 
drunkenness and is already having a favorable effect 
in improving family relations. But it is not easy 
to separate moral and economic causes. They are 
inter-active — the one provoking the other. 

While much and very much may be said about the 
virtues of the American home, the home of a gener- 
ation ago had, along with all that might be said in 
its favor, some serious limitations. Its virtues flour- 
ished in what has been called "a closed circle.' ' These 
virtues were not carried over into the larger social and 



1 According to lately reported statistics, San Francisco has half 
as many divorces as marriages, and Portland has one divorce for every 
two and a quarter marriages. 

[172] 



FACING FACTS 

civic life. If not selfish, it was at least self-centered. 
Our free, progressive democracy has broken down 
some of the older artificial and external supports, and 
is building a new foundation upon free, loyal intel- 
lectual and living comradeship. 

Divorce, therefore, in America may be partly inci- 
dental to a moral transformation. Professor Howard 
makes the following observation : " Of a truth to the 
serious student of social evolution, the accelerated 
divorce movement appears clearly as an incident in 
the mighty process of spiritual liberation which is 
radically changing the relative positions of men and 
women in society. . . . The corporate unity of the 
patriarchal family has been broken up and even 
completely destroyed. More and more, wife and child 
have been released from the sway of the home-father, 
and placed directly under the larger social control . . . 
The family bond is no longer coercion, but persuasion. 
The tie which holds the members of the family to- 
gether is ceasing to be judicial and becoming spirit- 
ual." 1 Professor Hudson, also, after a careful 
discussion of the present tendencies and symptoms of 
the age reaches the conclusion: "That the contra- 
dictions of our own day may mean the advancement 
toward a new moral order." 2 

How far the above discussion explains the ugly facts 
of the prevalence of crime and social evils, we shall 
not try definitely to estimate. As the situation now 
stands, even the fervent optimist is compelled to admit 



1 See "Introduction to Social Ethics" — Mecklin — p. 243. 

2 See Charles A. Ellwood — "The Reconstruction of Religion.' 
-p. 14. 



[173] 



KELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

that it is nothing short of a national scandal and 
menace which law as well as persuasion and the best 
ethical teaching should hasten to correct. 

It is difficult, however, for an optimist, especially 
for one who even in a slight way has come in touch 
with European life to believe that American life, and 
American individual character is as much more cor- 
rupt than European life as comparative tables of 
crime and divorce would seem to indicate. There 
must be a different and more favorable explanation. 
There are those who maintain that European family 
life is not as wholesome as in America. That certain 
irregularities there, on the part of the husband in 
particular, are regarded as a matter of course and 
cause little disturbance in family relations. The same 
laxity in America would strain family relations, and 
lead to divorce. So far as this is true, American 
domestic life is the more wholesome, even though 
there are more divorces. 

There are reasons to believe that when all the 
forces are properly studied that cause this lamentable 
condition in America it will yet be seen that our 
family life is essentially sound, and that there never 
was a time when America could boast of so many 
happy homes, and so much wholesome home life as 
at the present time. We freely admit that there is 
cause for anxiety, and need for an awakening from 
our indifference in regard to this subject, but we do 
not believe that the situation need produce despair 
nor pessimism. 



[174] 



WHAT OF THE FUTURE ? 



"The Kingdom is coming, not come ; the Church is making, 
not made. Christendom is in a sense a word of the past; 
its history may be traced out and written down. In a sense 
it is a word of the present, representing a mighty living 
force today. Still more is it a word of the future, for as 
yet we have not been able to see what Christianity fully 
means. He was right, who in answer to the question, 'Is 
the Christian religion played out?' replied, 'It has not 
yet been tried\" 

— W. T. Davison. 



CHAPTER XIX 
What of the Future 

IT IS quite easy to prophesy, particularly if one 
prophesies concerning events to be fulfilled far 
enough in the future. If the prophecy is not fulfilled, 
one can conveniently forget the whole matter. If, 
perchance, it should prove true, one can claim credit 
for great foresight. 

The following prophecy is attributed to Sir Isaac 
Newton: "I believe, from the study of God's word, 
that in the future He will greatly accelerate the move- 
ment of converting the world and accomplish the work 
suddenly. But I am convinced, also, from the study 
of the Word, that before that comes to pass, there will 
be a marvelous increase in the speed of transportation 
on the earth. I believe that in the Providence of 
God, though the method now be entirely hidden, men 
will yet travel on the earth at the rate of fifty miles 
an hour." 1 The world laughed at him; an increase of 
speed from eight to fifty miles an hour was utterly 
beyond the frontier of its thought. The keen and 
caustic Voltaire said in bitter scorn: "One can see 
how stupid the old Bible is, in that it has addled the 
intellect of Sir Isaac Newton, the most acute on the 
earth, until he talks like a fool. He says the time 



1 H. G. Wells in "Short History of the World" soon to be pub- 
lished will predict that we are in but the dawn of. human greatness, 
that we will go on in ever-widening circles of adventure and achieve- 
ment — See Colliers, November 11, 1922. 



[177] 



KELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

will come when a man will be at one point on the 
earth's surface at the beginning of an hour and fifty- 
miles away at the end of it. Absurd ! Unthinkable ! ' ■ 

The pessimist was wrong again, as this prediction 
of the optimist has been more than fulfilled. Two 
generations ago the lumbering old stage coach, making 
about eight miles an hour, was quite generally in 
use. Our fastest trains now run on a sixty mile per 
hour schedule, and have reached a speed of 112 miles 
an hour, thus not only fulfilling but surpassing Sir 
Isaac's prediction and even doubling it. 

Should we go back a hundred years, before trains 
were in use, and compare the rate of travel of that 
day with modern air service, we secure a most strik- 
ing contrast. The modern flying machine can make, 
if necessary, a schedule of one hundred thirty to one 
hundred fifty miles an hour — an increase in the rate 
of travel of over one thousand per cent in a hundred 
years. The new French hospital airship is construc- 
ted to make a speed of one hundred thirty miles per 
hour. On April 6, 1922, at Daytona Beach, Florida, 
Sir Haugdahl drove his specially constructed motor 
car at the rate of 180.27 miles per hour, covering a 
mile in 19.97 seconds, thus making a new world 
record. In the aerial races, Oct. 14, 1922, a distance 
of 1600 miles was traveled at an average speed of 
206 miles an hour, and a rate of 248.5 per mile was 
reached, covering one kilometer. 

So far as the United States is concerned, the ac- 
cumulation of wealth also is phenomenal. The Na- 
tional wealth of the United States was : 

[i78] 



WHAT OF THE FUTURE 

1850 $7,135,780,000 

I860 16,159,616,000 

1870 30,068,518,000 

18 80 43,642,000,000 

1890 65,037,091,000 

190 o 88,517,306,000 

1910 140,000,000,000 

192 o 300,000,000,000 

Edgar Crammond, in a paper read before the 
Bankers' Institute, London, England, June 1920, esti- 
mated the national wealth of the United States at 
$350,000,000,000 to $400,000,000,000, and that of 
other great countries as follows :* 

The United Kingdom $120,000,000,000 

France 92,500,000,000 

Germany 83,000,000,000 

Italv _ 35,500,000,000 

Japan*'.'.'...'.'.'' 23,500,000,000 

Belgium ••• 12,000,000,000 

The sense of Christian stewardship, as pointed out 
in a foregoing chapter, is gaining more rapidly than 
wealth in general. There is a basis for the growing 
expectancy through the new emphasis that all churches 
are placing on the obligation of stewardship, and 
the great joy and satisfaction people are discovering 
in the better use of accumulated wealth, that sud- 
denly the Christian nations, in keeping with the 
ideals of New Testament standards, may consecrate 
all their wealth to the service and highest welfare of 
humanity. 

i See The World Almanac. 

[179] 



RELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

Moreover, business men are beginning to recognize 
the economic value of foreign missions and are in- 
teresting themselves in the extension of Christianity. 
Not long since the Lieutenant Governor of New 
Guinea said every penny spent by missionaries saves 
pounds to the administration, for the missions bring 
peace, law and order. Even in our own country, the 
Digger Indian got his breakfast out of an ant hill with 
a stick, and was so nearly devoid of all garments that 
you could have clothed him for a year on twenty-five 
cents worth of cotton. He is but a type of many thou- 
sands in the heathen world. The business world is rec- 
ognizing that you can not carry on commerce with 
such peoples. Christianize, civilize these people and 
they will need shoes, hats, clothing, furniture, houses, 
tools, machinery, books, papers, a thousand and one 
things that make them valuable as traders. Our aver- 
age business with England is about one hundred fifty 
dollars per individual; with China about eight dol- 
lars ; with Africa about three dollars. This difference 
of trade simply indicates the difference in progress of 
civilization, or shall we say the progress of Christian- 
ity in these countries ? Recently a leading journal gave 
an account of a meeting of the San Francisco Cham- 
ber of Commerce which a few years ago selected 
twenty-five business men from six of the coast cities 
and sent them to China to study trade conditions. 
On their return they voted unanimously that relations 
between missions and trade were, very close. They 
declared that if it had not been for the missionaries 
there would be little or no trade with the interior 

[i8o] 



WHAT OF THE FUTURE 

of China. A British statesman recently declared 
that a missionary twenty-five years on the field, is 
worth $50,000 a year to the commerce of Great Bri- 
tain. It is freely asserted that China is now under a 
republican form of government because of the in- 
fluence of Christian missions. It would seem that 
many conditions are converging toward the fulfillment 
of Newton's prophecy. 

Newton was correct also in recognizing that certain 
changes and new conditions were necessary before 
a rapid and sudden movement toward the Christian- 
ization of the world could take place. For want of 
those conditions, Greece failed to extend her democ- 
racy beyond a city state. Rome found it difficult to 
hold together the widely scattered provinces con- 
quered by her "far flung battle lines." The present 
British Empire, including one fifth of the land area 
of the earth and distributed over the entire globe; 
and our own Republic, extending from sea to sea and 
including many distant islands of the Pacific, would 
have been well nigh impossible before the coming of 
the printing press, the fast going steamship, the rail- 
way, the telephone and ocean cable. 

It is not only that we have learned to travel at the 
rate of fifty to one hundred miles an hour, but we are 
in possession of many other means that may become 
agencies in accelerating the coming of the Kingdom. 
The rapid growth of the English language, promising 
soon to be understood the world around; our im- 
proved methods of sowing, reaping and milling, mak- 
ing it possible to wipe out famine and adequately to 
feed the world; the wonderful advance in medical 

[181] 



KELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

science, assuring a lengthened and more wholesome 
and efficient physical life; the advanced means of 
communication and transportation ■ — the telephone, 
the wireless, the aeroplane. Nations are now in touch 
through the air as well as by land and water. They 
can literally catch each other's speech out of the 
atmosphere. 

A new interest in foreign peoples is everywhere 
manifest. Foreign news has captured the front page 
of the daily papers of all the leading nations. The 
attainment of a warless world has become a ruling 
passion and is advocated by pen and persuasion, in 
schools and colleges and books, and in the highways 
and byways of public life. It is no longer confined 
to the efforts of a few idealists. 

There are also indications that education and re- 
ligion may become more closely united. Education 
promises again "to become in intention and spirit re- 
ligious, and that the impulse to devotion, to universal 
service and to complete escape from self, may reappear 
again, stripped and plain, as the recognized funda- 
mental structural impulse of human society." 1 Edu- 
cation may become the preparation of the individual 
for the community, for international sympathy and 
good-will, for the world view, for the feeling of com- 
mon brotherhood toward all peoples of earth; and 
religious training emphasizing the cardinal principle 
of the Universal Fatherhood of God may soon be rec- 
ognized as the heart of that preparation, creating 
a new spirit, a new enthusiasm, a new passion and 



1 H. G-. Wells — The Outline of History, p. 1089, single volume. 

[182] 



WHAT OF THE FUTURE 

dynamic for world conquest in the name of the 
World's Redeemer • — Jesus Christ. 

Along with the teaching of the Bible and the 
preaching of the church, science, commerce, the press, 
and statesmen are proclaiming the unity of the race 
and are meeting in international conference and 
planning for the welfare of mankind. A new inter- 
national mindedness has sprung up and with it a new 
international consciousness. It is a hopeful sign that 
our leaders in public life are, in greater numbers than 
ever before, pronounced in their allegiance to the prin- 
ciples of the Christian faith — Lloyd George, Gener- 
als Foch and Pershing, Harding, Hughes, Bryan, 
Wilson, Daniels and literally scores of others. Many 
of the Oriental representatives to the Washington 
Conference are of confessed Christian affiliation. 
No less than eighty of the Chinese delegation are 
related to churches or to the Young Men's Chris- 
tian Association. In the Japanese group there are 
twenty men who have served on local or national 
Young Men's Christian Association committees. The 
delegate from India, Mr. Sastri, was welcomed in New 
York upon his arrival by the International committee 
of the Young Men's Christian Association. 

The hope of the future now seems to depend on 
four great agencies — science, democracy, education 
and religion. The present progress and outlook in 
all four are of a character to inspire optimism. 

This is rightly called the scientific age. In no 
phase of our modern life has progress been so marked 

[183] 



RELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

as in the field of science. Its victories read like 
a fairy tale, and one is compelled to draw on the 
imagination to grasp, in any measure, its marvelous 
conquests, and it would seem that we are at present 
merely at the threshold of the most amazing revela- 
tions. Science has become far too resourceful and 
powerful to be permitted longer to devote its ener- 
gies to destructive weapons in the interests of war- 
fare. In the future it must be wholly consecrated to 
constructive work in the interests of peace and pro- 
gress. Science has had its faults as has every other 
agency that has wrought in the interest of mankind. 
It has been far too fragmentary. Scientists working 
in their own little department have failed to recog- 
nize the relation of their fields to the whole. It also 
has been too exclusively engaged with the physical. 
It is only recently that it has seriously undertaken 
to deal with our social and religious welfare. There 
is need for greater synthetic work among scien- 
tists. They draw conclusions from to small a 
number of experiments or at least from too small a 
range of observation. Science, however, is determined 
to know the truth, and more and more it is revealing 
new truth and liberating old truth from its mixture 
of error. One hope of the future lies in this ever 
enlarging truth. For if the truth shall make us free, 
we shall be free indeed. 

Democracy, at least so far as its extensive phase 
is concerned, is triumphant. Indeed, its spread during 
the past decade has been so phenomenal that its very- 
growth threatens to become its embarrassment. But 

[i«4] 



WHAT OF THE FUTURE 

the entire concept of democracy is now undergoing 
careful review and critical analysis. We have already 
come to realize we must have more than political 
democracy, more than universal suffrage, more than 
equal rights and opportunities, more than the voice 
and counsel of the common man. Democracy must 
emphasize duties and obligations as well as personal 
rights. It must beget "the larger heart and the 
kindlier hand." "Modern democracy is becoming 
less a matter of personal rights, less a matter of party 
programs, less a matter of legal traditions and more 
a state of mind, a feeling of community interests 
based upon common ideals." 1 Democracy must be- 
come more a matter of the spirit, more a sympathetic 
cooperation with our fellow men in an attempt to 
work out humanity's highest destiny. It must partake 
more largely of the Christian ideal of brotherhood, 
acknowledging a common Father, hence, a common 
family of which each and all are members. It must 
build on education and religion, for democracy was 
never intended for illiterate and irreligious peoples. 
This age is working out a new democracy. 2 



1 Mecklin — Introduction to Social Ethics, p. 436. 

1 "The Church and Industrial Reconstruction," p. 16, states this 
larger meaning of Democracy as follows: "In this insistance upon the 
value of the individual personality and the underlying faith in the 
potential capacity of the least of men to fulfill some worthy function 
in society, Christianity finds its point of contact with modern 
democracy. Democracy is the attempt to realize this fundamental 
right of every personality to self expression through cooperation with 
others in a common task. In the political sphere it has already 
found large recognition. But we are discovering that there are 
other spheres of human interest to which it equally applies. In fact, 
if we begin by accepting the Christian estimate of man we shall find 
it difficult to set any limits to democracy. It applies, or should apply, 
in the sphere of organized religion, which is the Church. It applies 
in the sphere of industry, etc." See also Cohklin "The Direction 
of Human Evolution" p. 100 and Giddings, "Elements of Sociology" 
p. 315. 



[185] 



RELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

The trend in education despite certain modern 
criticisms is wholesome. The flocking of youth to our 
high schools and colleges, the passion of the American 
people for education, point in the right direction. 
While most of our educational work is well done, in 
view of the needs of this age, and the rapid spread 
of democracy, our educational system also is being 
subjected to a searching criticism, which in the end 
is bound to prove beneficial. Education must be less 
subject to the immediate demands of the age. It 
must assume initiative and leadership and in a larger 
way help to direct and mold modern life. We must 
not only educate for efficiency but for leisure as well, 
in order to save men and women from becoming 
mere machines under the influence of modern indus- 
trial life. Education must be fraught with a larger 
social, ethical and religious content. It must break 
from the mass-curriculum and more fully adapt it- 
self to individual capacities. It must include at 
least four leading objectives: (1) The intellectual, 
covering all that modern knowledge and experience 
have to furnish in general enlightenment and in dis- 
ciplining the mind, enabling the individual to grapple 
with the real problems of modern, practical life. (2) 
The cultivation of a disposition which inclines one 
to the good, pure, true and beautiful. (3) Strength 
of will, sufficient to lead one to assume his full share 
of the world's work and to hold one steadfast in the 
path of rectitude. (4) An international conscious- 
ness. Many of our great problems now arise out of 
international relations and this will be more largely 

[186] 



WHAT OF THE FUTURE 

true in the future. Education must do more to im- 
part the world-view and to give an understanding 
and appreciation of foreign peoples. It must do, only- 
it must do it better, what the Church is trying to do 
through its missionary instruction and it must do it 
without minimizing or merging our finest spirit of 
nationalism. "Patriotism of humanity " must be 
taught along with national patriotism. 

It has been the effort of this volume to prove that 
the church is alert, active and progressive in a measure 
never before known, that its sanctions are more whole- 
some than ever before. 

We do not agree with those who maintain that the 
church has carried the extensive phase of its work 
too far, that her activities are too many and too 
widely spread. She must still dare farther in these 
directions. The entire world is her legitimate field, 
and she must aim to sanctify not a part of life but 
the whole of life — individual, social, national and 
international. But there is much justice in the criti- 
cism that the Church of God needs to enrich and 
deepen her own life. In proportion as we lengthen 
our cords, we must strengthen our stakes. In the pro- 
portion we scatter our activities, we must enrich our 
spirit. There is urgent need, therefore, for renewed 
faith, devotion, prayer, and consecration. The pro- 
gress in all these great agencies for human betterment 
reveals little ground for pessimism and none for des- 
pair, but it is of a character, on the contrary, to inspire 
hope, courage and well-grounded optimism. As relig- 
ious workers, we need to lose that caution that leads us 

[187] 



EELIGIOUS OPTIMISM 

to think over much about our own denominational 
interests and safety and assume the divine reckless- 
ness of the Master who was willing to risk his life in 
order to save the world. Many sects and denomina- 
tions must assume the attitude of John the Baptist, 
— a willingness to decrease that Christ may increase. 

In sculpture, the Laocoon Group, which represents 
Laocoon and his two sons struggling with the serpents 
that came up out of the Aegean Sea to punish the 
priests for warning Troy of the dangers of admitting 
the wooden horse, is generally regarded as one of the 
world's greatest masterpieces. The figures are por- 
trayed in that awful moment when they come to 
realize their fate and are gradually relaxing their 
efforts against the twin monsters of the sea. Critics 
and pessimists would have us believe that that fatal 
moment has come upon the Church. But a modern 
artist has given a new and far better interpretation 
to this ancient theme of humanity's struggle with 
evil. Mr. Edstrom, in his "Man Triumphant," has 
caught the spirit and trend of the church of this 
age. His theme is the same as that of the Greek 
masterpiece; but the issue is victory, not defeat. On 
the sides of the pedestal, as this modern masterpiece 
is described, are four figures representing humanity's 
achievements through physical power, through 
education, through cultivation of the emotional nature 
and through religion. We should care to change this 
but slightly and permit the four figures to stand for 
science, education, democracy, and the Christian re- 
ligion — Man triumphant through these forces is the 

[o:88] 



WHAT OF THE FUTURE 

optimistic answer to the despair of the world, repre- 
sented by the Greek artist about the time when 
Christianity entered, and to the gloom and forebod- 
ings of modern pessimism in regard to the Church 
and our modern civilization. 

"God grant us wisdom in these coming days, 
And eyes unsealed, that we clear visions see 
Of that new world that He would have us build 
To Life's ennoblement and His high ministry! 

God give us sense — God-sense — of Life's new needs, 
And souls aflame with new-born chivalries — 

To cope with those black growths that foul the ways — 
To cleanse our poisoned founts with God-born energies! 

To pledge our souls to nobler, loftier life, 

To win the world to His fair sanctities, 
To bind the nations in a pact of peace, 

And free the soul of Life for finer loyalties! 

Not since Christ died upon His lonely cross 

Has Time such prospect held of Life's new birth, 

Not since the world of chaos first was born 

Has man so clearly visaged hope of a new earth! 

Not of our own might can we hope to rise 

Above the ruts and soilures of the past, 
But with His help who did the first earth build, 

With hearts courageous we may fairer build this last!" 1 

FINIS 



1 Prom the Brooklyn Eagle in a Sermon by Br. Hillis. 

[189] 



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